THE CONJURING (2013)

Written by the twins from RAD (yes, including the one that grabbed his own ass while dancing), THE CONJURING tells the story of a family - husband, wife, five daughters - who move into a old house out in the country...a haunted house.  The normal stuff happens at first (creaking doors, cold chills, rancid meat smells, pictures falling off the walls, etc.), but when the hauntings become more violent, the parents bring in a husband and wife team of paranormal investigators.  The standard haunted house exorcism movie stuff follows.

Despite the the fact that the story is totally 100% unoriginal, I actually enjoyed THE CONJURING mainly thanks to the leadership of director James Wan who, as you can see in the extras, really turns this average story into a thoroughly entertaining film.  Good pace, mature scares (none of that annoying 4,000 decibel jump scene bullshit), excellent production values, impressive cast (I really enjoyed Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson), strong camerawork and some seriously creepy situations.

THE CONJURING is a good film, but in my personal opinion I really wish the tension would have just kept building and building until it finally exploded into a grand finale of pure unrelenting blasphemy, gore and violence beating the audiences brains to death.  But that's just me.  As it is, it's still a fun, light-weight haunted house movie.  I'm looking forward to seeing what else this series brings.

Part 2 - The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Part 3 - The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
Annabelle spin-off 1 - Annabelle (2014)
Annabelle spin-off 2 - Annabelle: Creation (2017)
Annabelle spin-off 3 - Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
The Nun spin-off (2018)
The Nun II (2023)

SOURCE CODE (2011)

The last thing Army helicopter pilot Jake Gyllenhaal remembers is being on a mission in the Middle East. Suddenly he wakes up on a commuter train in America and there's some hot chick sitting across from him talking about life and shit. He understandably freaks out. Then the train blows the fuck up and he instantly wakes up in a strange pod like thing that kinda looks like a cockpit. A woman in military clothing appears on a screen and starts asking him about the details of the mission. Jake has no idea what the f is going on and she explains to him that he is on a mission to identify the person who planted a bomb on a train this morning, in order to prevent an even larger explosion that is going to maybe happen very soon. With this in mind Jake is thrust back into the mission over and over while at the same time trying to figure out what exactly is happening to him. Most likely you've already guessed the twist ending and you would be correct. The "twist" is about as shocking as when George Michael announced that he was gay.

I saw SOURCE CODE at the theater, but when I sat down earlier to rewatch it for this review I couldn't even remember what it was about. Director Duncan Jones seems to be a mildly talented young director, good at creating interesting visuals but I wish he would really try to beef up his character development skills. Both this film and MOON had very interesting premises and visually looked really good, but both films lacked the kind of strong character investment of say the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Worth watching, but after the initial viewing I cannot imagine wanting to watch it over and over.