The Conjuring (2013) 1h 52m

I find the Warren's to be fascinating people, and I mean this in the most neutral and scientific sense.  While they were a power couple of paranormal and demonology, there always remains a thread of skepticism with their cases that someone is trying to pull.  Others in their field have denounced them or claimed they were exaggerating cases.  Prior to this, most people know them from the Amityville Horror case or seeing Lorraine on Paranormal State, and in a way maybe the pop culture association has done more harm than good.  With that said, I was excited when this film was going to come out because I was hoping it was going to pull back some of the veil on their work.  Instead it spawned a spin-off and sequel which I feel is more damning than Baal on holiday.

We start The Conjuring by getting a brief telling of Annabelle, a spirit that inhabits a creepy porcelain doll (in real life it's just a Raggedy Ann doll).  This is more to give us a lead-in to the Warrens as they're approached after speaking at a college and asked to come to a possibly haunted house.  The rest of the film is a mix of the family living in the home, the team investigating, and some personal life of the Warrens.

This film should really just be called "Jump Scares: The Movie."  Existing as much more of a paranormal drama, it's mostly figures popping out and loud noises ensconced in a supermarket paperback.  The only scare I liked was the sheet being blown off the clothesline and taking the form of a person before flying up to a window and then away.  I don't think it's coming back either.  We'll miss you sheet, we barely knew you.

I do want to rant about one thing here:  At the beginning we're given some text about the Annabelle doll and how the story was locked away until now.  Okay, first, that fucking doll is the most well known thing in their collection.  You can go to any paranormal website and there's probably a page on it.  They claim it caused a motorcycle accident with someone that made fun of it.  Before this film, if you Googled the Warrens you would see that fucking doll!  They do fucking tours of their haunted object museum!!!  Kiss my ass "locked away until now."

Okay, rant over, but so is my love for this film.  It wasn't what I hoped for when it first came out.  There are too many artistic liberties taken via Hollywood and at the same time I found myself bored.  If you're trying to make something scarier and instead I'm looking up haunted objects on Ebay then you failed!  I would be interested in a movie on this supposed Djinn trapped in a ring that will make you a sexual beast!  That can be The Conjuring 3: The Ring!  Only $49.99, with free shipping!

I give The Conjuring 1 picture of the real Annabelle out of 5:

The Dead Room (2015) 1h 20m

"Hey guys!  I have access to this empty house for the weekend, do you want to make a movie?"
"Sure, whatever."
"We'll call it 'The Dead Room' and it will have minimal explanation for what happens!"

And that's the story of how The Dead room was made... or at least how I assume it was made.  I'm sure this had a budget in the sum of money I will never see at one time in my entire life, but I honestly have no clue what was really going on at the end.

Two paranormal investigators and a psychic come to a house in the middle of fuck all New Zealand after being called by a family we never see.  The house is haunted by the ghost of a "giant" man.  Initially they think that he is trying to attack them to get them to leave but they discover that he is trying to get them to leave in order to save them.  Save them from what, you ask yourself (or you don't.  Whatever.  I don't blame you).  Save them from the mummified woman that is chained up in a secret basement under the house that you have to bust through the dry wall which you only know because of a ghost hand print on a thermal image scan.  That's a long sentence.  It took a long time for this movie to get up to this point when watching it.

Cops are called, the body is gone, and they realize the ghost was trying to save them from the Mummies Alive!  Everybody dies super fast and the ghost/mummy/witch/whatever moves at the camera quickly and we're done.

This movie sucked.  I was briefly excited at the prospect of this weird corpse in the basement but it's like they've been edging this whole time just to fucking shoot their spooky load in the last 10 minutes.  While I'm complaining about this movie (as it's pretty much what I do on this blog), the choice to have a cage of birds in this film was a poor one.  First off, the birds don't care when they get fed after supposedly not eating for a few days.  I've seen pigeons pull a knife on other pigeons for french fries after having just ate one.  Goddamn pigeons and their adorable switchblades!  Second, these birds are horrible actors as they don't react to anything the people are.  Third, their cage gets thrown across the room at our group of losers and in the next shot the cage apparently righted itself and the birds are totally ready to just nap.  Like the ghost was like "Oh shit! Sorry birds!  Let me fix that for you."  Birds fucking suck as actors.  Kick them out of SAG.

I give The Dead Room 1 parakeet out of 5, and this is only because of a mummy woman being chained in the basement and that was briefly cool:

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