The Conjuring is a horror film that takes time to grow and familiarise you with its characters. Not exceptionally, mind you; it's still a slick, effectively-paced tension piece designed for one very specific purpose – but it's filled with enough development to convince you to care for the people involved in its happenings, and enough to make you understand how their dynamics work to manufacture situations that you genuinely want to see play out.
The scares in The Conjuring are long, and terribly smart; filled with all the worst things you could imagine - principally because they're left almost entirely to your imagination. Director James Wan instinctively knows the atoms of what makes a terrifying image; he knows that in the shadows, in what we can't see, lies the fiercest and deafeningly silent of terrors. But he knows also that in objects, in items from the greater pantheon of horror films good and bad – creepy dolls, chairs, relics – there still lies plenty of horror to be mined, if done right. These touchstones and go-to's for the broader audiences pepper the film, but never in a way that feels hack-y to the seasoned viewer.
More than anything else, The Conjuring sticks the landing where Wan's last film, Insidious, didn't. The latter went all limbo, and camp and ineffective, whereas this film stays within its lore and boundaries, delivering on its long-con layup terrifically.
In cinemas Thursday 18 July.
