150 - The Conjuring

    A family moves into a house, and finds that it's haunted.  They find a couple that works on cleaning houses of this kind of problem.
    Yep, the story is exactly that predictable.  It's not bad at all, but I just realized that this plot can apply to nearly any haunted house movie.
    There are a few things that set this movie apart.  First, it's set in the early 70s, and it's handled wonderfully.  It doesn't come across as campy 70s decoration.  It looks completely reasonable.  The only real signs are the cars being driven, and occasionally, shirts have a certain cut to them, and patterns that are just a bit dated.  Otherwise, the picture is nicely crisp.  It's good.
    The effects are generally great.  They aren't played in a way the focuses the camera on them exclusively, so it's kind of nice to see them being incorporated into the background.
    What the movie does best is something that I'm a little conflicted about.  There's a mythology that is built.  We get that the house has been haunted for a long time, and that the original inhabitant that triggered the haunting has effectively killed eight families between then and now.  I like that.  It draws me into the movie, and makes me hungry for backstory.  What bothers me more about it is that this is one of these "based on a true story" movies.  I hate that angle.  I think it was useful when I was 10, and seeing part of Amityville Horror for the first time.  Now, it just seems like a dumb way of trying to sucker people into being scared.
    Still, it was well played, and I'm glad to see that well done, if derivative, horror is still out there.
    This does remind me that I want to watch Insidious again.  But that might wait until next year.