Month: July 2013

I went in to see The Wolverine with one thing on my mind. It couldn’t be worse than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. What a terrible movie. Maybe the worst big comic movie since Superman Returns.

Basically, the bar is set pretty low. So as long as the plot makes sense and there are some decent action scenes, I will probably find it okay

There are gratuitous amounts of shirtless scenes as well. Dem veins.

This story takes place after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, with some flashbacks before half of the events in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is still dead, she just happens to be haunting the dreams of Logan / Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Logan has now escaped to the Canadian wilderness to be left alone.

Enter Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a spunky young Asian woman who can see how people will die (not a mutant) and will not leave Logan alone. In Nagasaki, right before we dropped that big bomb, Logan saved a young general’s life from the blast and radiation. Mr. Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) became one of the richest people in Japan after that incident! Now, he is about to die, and he wants Logan to come to Japan to say goodbye to the man who saved his life.

Of course, Mr. Yashida wants more than a goodbye. He still wants to live and he believes he can offer Logan a way to finally die by transferring his healing powers. Interesting proposition. Logan also stepped deep into a company power struggle. Yashida’s son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada) thinks he is gaining control of the company, but it is actually going to the granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto). To make matters worse, the Yakuza and a ninja clan (including Will Yun Lee) are also involved!

At the same time, Wolverine gets poisoned by Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), the only other mutant in the movie, causing him to lose most of his healing ability. Oh no! He has to fix all the kidnappings, act as a bodyguard, figure out who is the biggest asshole in the room, and try to not die. Typical Tuesday.

Adamantium on Adamantium porn. To reiterate, I had only two criteria that I needed met: a plot that makes sense, and interesting action scenes.

First let’s look at the plot. This film was far too long. They focused a lot on plot and character development, but it wasn’t good plot or character development. Especially in the middle, it dragged on a lot, made more relevant by the lack of action.

The plot is actually a bit confusing. Apparently everyone is a bad guy! The ending attempts to wrap up the multiple plot lines with a big reveal, but instead a few of the plot lines no longer make any sense. Those plot lines remain unanswered the rest of the movie, swept under the rug, hoping no one would notice.

Alright, so the plot is a mess. (Nerd Quandary: In X2 we found out that Logan’s memories after his Adamantium surgery had been wiped. It was explained in X-Men Origins: Wolverine that those memories were lost thanks to adamantium bullets to the head. He only regains a few memories thanks to Xavier’s help, yet he is supposed to remember World War II? Hmm…)

The next thing I have to look at is the action. There is a really interesting train scene that is visually pleasing. The arrow/ninja scene had a great take down. But outside of those two moments, everything was lackluster. The final scene felt really cheap, and a lot of that has to do with Viper as a villain. She is a mutant and has powers, but they are never really explained. She just does more and more snake like things throughout the film, but it all just feels fake. She is also incredibly pointless in the long run.

Crap, I didn’t know what my rating would be until I got to this part of my review. Turns out I disliked it more than I thought. STILL better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Far better. The story at least tries to be interesting, and gives some entertainment value. Unfortunately, relooking over the experience, it was overall less than stellar.

We can all feel good at the fact that X-Men: Days Of Future Past comes out next year. It happens to be one of the most ambitious film ideas I’ve ever heard of, and the subject of the scene in the credits.

1 out of 4.

Trance came out in theaters in late March, but apparently never came close to my area, so I had to wait until the DVD Release.

You’d think a college town would be able to justify more indie and lesser known releases. But then again, you’d think a college town would also have trivia nights at their bars.

More importantly, Trance was directed by Danny Boyle. Surely the man who did 28 Days Later…, 127 Hours, and Slumdog Millionaire has earned post-indie status by now.

When he rubs his temple that way, my mind feels raped. According to this movie, stealing art used to be easy. You kind of just pranced into a museum, took it and ran, then went home and hid. Shit gets stolen, and a museum gets fucked. Nowadays, it is way high tech and almost impossible without a huge plan to do it. Okay, that isn’t true. Just read the beginning of this Cracked article which states basically the opposite with facts.

But let’s say for this movie art is hard to steal. Simon (James McAvoy) works as a dude who protects art in case someone tries to steam them when they are getting stolen. Guess what. Some people try to steal a famous painting, Witches In The Air, valued at over $25 million.

Franck (Vincent Cassel) and his crew (including Danny Sapani) steal the shit out of that painting, while also knocking out Simon for trying to be a hero. But when they look at their new score, they find that the painting is gone. Shit. What did Simon do!?

Too bad Simon doesn’t remember what he did with the painting. The men who tried to steal it are pretty pissed off, and have tortured him and tore up all of his things. But still, he just does not remember.

So they get a hypnotist, Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson). However, when she begins to work her mind magic, she discovers secrets that none of the individuals thought possible.

Rosario Dawson shows a lot of her…acting talents in this movie. First things first, for you fucking perverts out there. Rosario Dawson for the first time is completely nude in this movie. Like full frontal, lower and upper, multiple times, no body double nude. She is also shaved. Which is relevant to the plot of the movie. I feel dirty saying all of that, but not really.

There are only three main characters in this movie, but Danny Boyle makes sure you have to work to earn the story. There are twists, there are turns, there are mind fucks. If you stop paying attention, you might not be able to keep up, so it really rewards those people who don’t have short attention spans. It assumes the watcher is intelligent, and will take you on an (often really loud) journey.

I think by the end the story might have gotten a bit too ahead of itself, making too many leaps and bounds. Despite that, it was still a great story, another fantastic movie from Danny Boyle, and another reason why I hate the local theaters.

3 out of 4.

Alright, look, I am sorry it took this long to review District 9.

Most have you have already seen it by now, I bet. Which is great. It was fantastic when I watched in theaters in 2009. Shit, that is like, four years ago. FOUR YEARS AGO PEOPLE. Fuck. It seems so new, even now. Still, I am reviewing it now for two reasons. One, Neill Blomkamp. District 9 was his first directed movie, and it is an indie one at that. Insane. More importantly, he has another movie coming out in a couple of weeks, Elysium, you might have heard of it.

Reason number two? I said I would review this movie once I finally rewatched it again. Needless to say, that shit took awhile.

Yeah. Aliens AND politics. My kind of entertainment! You already know this is a positive review, look how highly I talked about it before.

This takes place in modern day time, 2010 or so, but in an alternative history. South Africa has always been known for its rambunctious nature and high levels of racism. But did you know in 1982 an Alien Spaceship landed above Johannesburg? Of course not, it is a movie, ffs.

Well, they checked out the ship that wasn’t attacking them and found hundreds of malnourished aliens on board that they now call Prawns, a racial slur against them. They were put into a government campsite outside of Johannesburg, named District 9 and given tiny shacks and junk yards to live in. There is constant pressure from those in Johannesburg, who hate the shit out of them, and internal struggles in their poor neighborhoods, so eventually the government wants them to be moved.

These aliens have rights though. They have to be evicted first, before they can be put in a new location much farther away (And a lot more shittier).

Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a random bureaucrat, has been assigned to give the notices. There is a lot of eyes watching the process, to make sure they don’t harass the prawns, so many news organizations have sent representatives. They also have a small armed force, lead by Koobus Venter (David James). But what happens when they find more than just a few homes smuggling alien weaponry, and discover something even bigger is forming?

Even more quizzical, what happens when they discover the black goop?

The feels. The feels. Oh my goodness, the feels.

One thing I certainly forgot in the four years since I saw this movie in theaters? It is kind of gross. The attention to detail is high, and that leads to some cringe worthy scenarios in my stomach area. Lot of violence. People die. Aliens die. People die in weird ways. Other things happen that are gross that I can’t really describe without spoilers. But seriously, gross gross gross.

However, at the same time, it is just so fucking well done. The plot, the intrigue, and the acting. Only one actor really matters in this movie, good ole Sharlto, who had basically his first role with this film. He carries it on his back, despite being a big unknown. Especially when a lot of the movie deals with him interacting with aliens and Nigerians, he really stands out (racist?).

However, there is one thing that keeps me from giving it a 4. Part of the reason I would give a 4 comes from rewatchability. I can watch a great movie, and love its acting, but if I don’t think I would want to watch it again in a few years, it can’t be a 4 for me. Now, this one took me about three years to finally watch after buying it, which is a huge amount of time. I didn’t finally watch it because I wanted to, just had to before Elysium.

So, with that, that explains the 3. Very good, watch it at least once and be happy.

3 out of 4.

Coriolanus gets the disctinction for being another movie that took me a long ass time to watch. It came out roughly the summer of 2012, and I got it then too. Just. Never. Watched it. Shit, my parents watched it right away, and somehow I just forgot about it. Well, the opportunity came up for me to watch it on Blu-Ray instead, so I rented it, despite owning it. Why? Because then I had a time limit to watch it! If I didn’t watch it before today, I would have wasted money.

I can’t be wasting money. Unless you call renting a movie you own anyways wasting money. Remember when I said I forgot about it? I mean literally forgot that it existed. Whoops. Fuck.

Never forget about Voldemort and The Phantom. They don’t take kindly to that.

Initially, the plot description confused me. “A banished hero of Rome allies with a sworn enemy to take his revenge on the city.” Alright, a period piece in Ancient Rome, sweet! But when I saw the pictures, I saw modern looking stuff. I forgot that Rome was still a city in Italy, so I guess that is what is going on with it?

Nope, Coriolanus is a Shakespeare play. Should have guessed it. Directed by Ralph Fiennes (his first ever director role), this is one of those modern Shakespeare plays, which I guess will get me prepped for when I finally see the new Much Ado About Nothing.

Caius Martius (Fiennes) is a great Roman warlord, who kind of hates the Romans themselves. He finds the plebians to be silly. But he kicks so much ass, and wins so many fights he eventually wins them over. Heck, he also almost takes out the nearby Volscian army, lead by Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler). They both survive, but it is clear Rome won the bout overall.

Eventually he wins the public over and decides to run for Consul, the leader of Rome. The senate fears his power though, so they begin a smear campaign against him, attempting to turn the public against him as well. Caius has quite a temper, so he eventually gets pissed off, curses everyone and quickly gets branded a traitor and exiled out of Rome. Surely they won’t regret sending out one of their greatest generals, super pissed off, out of city gates? I hope he doesn’t get the urge to come back…with force.

Jessica Chastain plays his wife, and Vanessa Redgrave his mother.

Oh shit, he is really really mad. Rome is totally going down.

Shakespeare. Are you familiar with his words? Well, for the untrained, it is easy to get lost in the words and get confused, which is why I watched the movie with subtitles.

Coriolanus presumably follows the script to a letter, which means the movie feels overly dramatic. There is a lot of monologue-ing and yelling by the various characters. Lots of yelling, because that means passion, and everyone is passionate in a Shakespeare play.

Which felt really annoying. Overall, Coriolanus is good in that it is trying something new. There are other modern Shakespeare things, but they usually never work for me. This one was different enough that it seemed to be okay they were speaking in such strange ways but with guns.

But the story itself is a let down. I guess I could blame that one on Shakespeare. It wasn’t one that kept me interested. Way more talking and not enough doing. Interesting movie to see once, but ehh…

Also, the Blu-Ray isn’t Blu-Ray quality, those bastards.

2 out of 4.

12 Rounds is a film that is now a bit older. Okay, 2009, so not too old. But I definitely remember seeing the trailer multiple times in theaters and dozens of TV Shots. You know what I thought of it back then? “Huh, that looks pretty good!”

Yeah, four years ago me was weird. Still, I never heard about it after the fact, but I did see that there was a direct to DVD sequel, 12 Rounds: Reloaded. Huh, so it was good…enough…right? To make a direct to DVD sequel? Something in the back of my mind made me want to watch it though. It could be really entertaining, if not just a bit silly.

YEAH. EXPLOSIONS! Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) is a big fancy arms dealer, a big bad guy, who they want to take down. Namely Danny Fisher (John Cena). Well, shit goes wrong. He almost gets away with his girlfriend, but then she gets hit with a car and dies. Shit, who saw that coming. Miles gets caught and he is pissed off.

A year later, Danny gets a phone call…FROM MILES! OH MAN! He has escaped from prison! And he has his girlfriend Molly (Ashley Scott) captive! Ahh! Miles tells him they are going to play a game, a game called 12 Rounds. He just passed Round 1 by surviving an explosion, and if he passes all 12 tasks, he will get the girl back. Sure. Right.

So Miles has Danny running around the city, with the help of the force (Steve Harris, Brian White, more) to get his girl back and also recapture and dangerous man. Also, explosions and death and shit. Lots of that.

Miles looks like a cross of Edward Norton and Josh Groban to me. Let’s just say this movie wasn’t as entertaining as advertised. Wasn’t even silly. It was a very serious faced film. Everyone took it very seriously, and I didn’t care one bit.

Shit, it took TWENTY minutes for the intro to finish so we could get to modern day and start the games. That is a long chase for the arms dealer dude. Who gives a fuck.

This movie literally gave me a headache with its badness. So I had to give it this rating, because I hate headaches. No entertainment value for me. Can’t wait for the sequel.

0 out of 4.

I often find that when all you do is talk about movies, people tend to suggest them. Of course I will watch a movie if someone suggests it to me, but with Ruby Sparks something even stranger happened. TWO people recommended this movie to me, potentially within a few weeks apart. Well, of course I have to see it now.

I also realized why I didn’t watch it right away. Sparks? That title is too close to the title Sparkle. I hated that movie.

I could write a better movie than Sparkle for sure. It would be about some sort of mythical creature that Sparkled under strange circumstances. I am sure that’s an original concept.

Calvin (Paul Dano) is a genius. Alright, he doesn’t like that word. But he dropped out of high school once he wrote what many consider to be the next great American novel, and he quickly rose to fame and success. But now, almost ten years later, he is in his late 20s and he still has one novel under his belt. He has released a few short stories and novellas, but nothing of any real length or magnitude.

Some genius indeed. It must all be getting to his head. In fact, he has to see a psychiatrist now just to sort through his feelings of loneliness.

But then one magical night, he has a dream. A dream of a girl, with red hair, and a quirky attitude. She is perfect to him. So he writes about his dreams and turns it into its own new story. Yes, this is the one, his next great novel! Who cares if his brother (Chris Messina) thinks the story is dumb.

Calvin really is a genius. His brain is so powerful, that one morning he woke up and found the literal girl of his dreams in his kitchen. Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan). In the flesh. Based on everything he wrote about. How can that be? People can’t just be created! Or can they? Truly only a genius (or geniuses, in some cases) could create a person without even trying. It gets weirder when he realizes it is not in his head. It gets creepier when he realizes that whatever he types comes true. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas play his mom and step-dad, while Steve Coogan has a small role as “other older writer dude.”

Anyone else find it funny how Ruby is always wearing red? And how she and Superman are never in the same room?

Yeah, so I really fucking love strange quirky movies like this. Pretty easy to learn that given my rating record. Watching this movie made me want to watch Stranger Than Fiction right after it. Another well acted quirky movie about the truth being determined by what someone rights. Who knew there was a whole drama about this!?

I found myself flailing while I watched this movie. My mind raced ahead of itself, so once I was given new information, I always assumed the worse. Having complete and utter power over someone? That can lead to many dark dark places, and I assumed each one would be touched upon. Thankfully, each one wasn’t touched upon, because I didn’t feel like crying that night. But the scene where the power finally got to the head? Shit scared me, and it did it in away without having to go the hard R rating that most of us are probably imagining. Which is great, when I rewatch this movie, I can not flip out as much and STILL enjoy the process they go through.

Besides, this type of stuff is every (male?) fantasy. Since Frankenstein, the idea of creating a person has always been intriguing. So why not?

I think this film is excellent on all cylinders, and exactly the type of thing I’d watch again and again.

4 out of 4.

I was given an advanced screening of the short “I Had A Heart Once“, directed by fellow movie reviewer Josh Lewis.

The short itself is only a little bit over five minutes. Our main and only character, John, is apparently ready to finally tell us what is on his mind after a night of heavy drinking and epiphanies.

Interlaced between the dialogue are clips of John wandering aimlessly around the city, looking sad, confused, and depressed, so it is not just simply one man talking on his couch.

One man and a couch? Could be a porno really.

The thing I liked most about the movie was the soundtrack and the last 20 or so seconds. The soundtrack carries the emotions splendidly throughout the short piece and enhances the feelings that the actor is trying to convey. The ending gives us context for his late night rant by finally answering the few questions you have during his talk: Who are you talking to and why?

Unfortunately for me this piece was not as powerful as I could have hoped, and I have been able to single it down to one reason. I didn’t understand almost half of the words spoken by our actor, Rohan Mead. Presumably his goal was to get the message across while also appearing wasted in some capacity. Therefore most of the lines are said quickly and go from whisper to regular voice quite often. His dialogue is very realistic in that regard, a man trying to get something off of his chest (and about his chest, hah) that he has kept deep for some time. But if I don’t know what words he uses, I can’t get lost in the powerful imagery it creates.

Should it have come with subtitles or at least had clearer dialogue, the review would have been higher.

2 out of 4.

When it was released, Red received pretty decent reviews from critics but didn’t do amazing at the box office. It made up for it in DVD/Blu-Ray sales though, gaining a small cult following, which is why they green-lit the sequel, surprisingly named Red 2.

The main notable difference between the two is that this one doesn’t have Morgan Freeman. For shame.

Although, as you can see from the picture, it has a lot of John Malkovich being very very John Malkovichy.

The movie begins with Frank (Bruce Willis) and Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) trying to build a home together. Frank is retired (and still extremely dangerous) but he wants to put his past behind him. Too bad Marvin (John Malkovich) comes prancing in, warning him that he thinks someone is trying to kill them.

Well, it turns out there actually are people trying to kill them! Reports have surfaced that they are nuclear terrorists, who are trying to take out Russia. In fact, the CIA are trying to take them in, including their main man Jack Horton (Neal McDonough, who looks like the white Robert Ri’chard), who has hired the world’s best assassin Han Cho Bai (Byung-hun Lee). The MI6 are sending their old friend Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Russia has Frank’s former fling, Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Sarah doesn’t like Katja.

So Frank, Sarah, and Marvin have to work together and find Dr. Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant war scientist who has been kept in the loony bin for over thirty years. Together, they hope to clear their name, and possibly stop a nuclear bomb from taking out a huge populatio of the world.

I decided to not talk about John Malkovich with my second image.

I don’t think you need to see Red in order to understand Red 2. All you have to know is that Frank and Sarah met in the first film, and everyone else has a huge history with everyone else. If you had to only pick one to watch, go with the original.

Red 2 isn’t bad per say, but it just doesn’t seem to care too much. Sure, it is entertaining, and funny at times, but not a lot happens overall. They are framed fugitives being hunted by the top governments around the world, yet they still have time to walk around Paris and go shopping. It just seemed odd and ruined the flow of the movie for me. The ending chase scene ended up being really predictable as well.

Red 2, just like R.I.P.D. had its enjoyable moments and was entertaining, just not something I would ever recommend to see more than once. I think Red 2 is not really based on the graphic novel like the first movie. Instead it is based on whatever the writer felt like. I usually don’t care how close a movie is to its source material, but I think in this case, they really didn’t know what to do with their characters. Because of that, it just felt like a mess.

John Malkovich is brilliant as always, and a bit more insane than normal. Malkovich is the main reason to see Red 2, and the only real reason.

2 out of 4.

Don’t worry readers, I am not about to spend a whole review explaining why R.I.P.D. (Trailer) just looks like a rehash of Men In Black. From the grumbles I heard in theaters during the trailer, I realized everyone had already figured it out on their own.

Technically R.I.P.D. is based off of a graphic novel of the same name, but it didn’t publish until after the first two MIB movies came out. Regardless, it seems like Universal itself doesn’t care about this movie with limited promotion and refusing early showings for critics. Generally when critics can’t get early showings things are going badly.

That facial hair from Bridges is not the something bad though. Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is a member of the Boston PD, and finds himself dead unexpectedly during a raid. Man, dying sure does suck. He gets pulled up to what he thinks is heaven and runs into…a Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker). What? Were you expecting Jesus? She offers him a choice. He can either go straight to Judgement and find out his fate for eternity, or join the Rest In Peace Department, serve for 100 years, and get a recommendation before Judgement.

Given Nick’s somewhat corrupt cop nature, he chooses to join the force. The R.I.P.D. are sent down to Earth to round up those who have died and refuse to pass on, as they slowly corrupt everything around them. Roy (Jeff Bridges) is a lawman from the 1800s, and reluctantly takes Nick under his wing.

Too bad the deadoes are also working on building an artifact to bring all the dead entities back to earth, and end the world. Good thing Nick just died and can try and stop it!

Kevin Bacon plays Nick’s old partner, Stephanie Szostak is Nick’s wife, and James Hong and Marisa Miller play Nick and Roy’s avatars while they are on earth. A joke that most certainly gets old really fast.

This joke might have gotten pretty old real quick. R.I.P.D. is not as bad as the trailers will have you believe. Sure, it has a lot to work on, and it could have been a lot better, but still, it isn’t complete trash. Critics just tend to give lower ratings to movies that they don’t get to see for free.

As for our leading man Ryan Reynolds, I thought he was really weak in this movie. Sure, his character just died, and he has a lot of angst, but I didn’t believe any of it in this movie. He was supposed to be pissed off the entire movie, but he just seemed passive aggressive and pouty.

Jeff Bridges was over the top in this movie, but it really did work. It was strange at first, having his era specific dialogue mixed in with the modern dialogue of everyone else. Once you got over that fact, basically everything he said was gold. I will give props to Mary-Louise Parker as well, who didn’t really have a lot to work with for her role yet still made it her own. She was in two different movies released this week (Red 2), and thankfully her characters were completely different.

The movie felt really short, and the ending was wrapped up pretty nicely with a bow, by ignoring pretty huge plot points. If you have monstrous beings running around Boston, blocking off whole intersections, with giant vacuum like holes appearing in the sky and taking out infrastructure, you are going to have hundreds of thousands of dead. After the initial appearance of bad guys, the streets became miraculously clear and no humans seemed to die. Great!

R.I.P.D. caused me to laugh on numerous occasions, but in general, the plot and acting from Reynolds felt really weak. It is at best a little bit entertaining, but not something I’d ever watch again.

2 out of 4.

The Conjuring is the second horror movie to come out during the 2013 Summer Season (the other being The Purge) and I can honestly say I didn’t see this one coming. Seriously. I saw zero previews for it in the theater. I didn’t even know it existed until about a week ago. The good news is that I never actually watched the trailer ahead of time, which is a rarity now in my position, so the movie could be a completely new experience for me.

Check out the rating for The Conjuring. It was rated R “for sequences of disturbing violence and terror.” You hear that? It was rated R literally for being too scary. No nudity, no language, no gore, no sex, no drug usage. Just R on terror alone. As a well established coward, let it be known that I am freaking out already.

Shit, matches in the 70s used to be awesome as shit.

The Conjuring tells the “true story” of a case studied by Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in the early 1970s. I agree that those two were real human beings, with Ed being a Demonologist, and Lorraine a clarivoyant. They traveled around, helping with exorcisms, clearing houses of spirits, and other similar activities. They are most famous for helping the Amityville people.

The family they end up helping in this film are the Perrons: Roger (Ron Livingston) and Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and their FIVE daughters (Kyla Deaver, Mackenzie Foy, Joey King, Hayley McFarland, Shanley Caswell). Poor Roger, you can tell he needs help before the ghosts come.

Well, strange things start occurring around their house. All of their clocks stop at 3:07 am. Their dog died, birds fly into windows, their daughters get tugged on at night, sleep walking, ghostly spirits. Not to mention doors slamming in their faces and literally having demonic ghosts jumping on them.

They cannot move, having put all of their money into this house and land. Sucks to suck. Thankfully the Warren’s agree to help. They bring along their crew (Shannon Kook), set up cameras, microphones, and other devices, pre-modern day ghost hunters. After confirming that there are indeed spirits in the house, they set out to determine if they are sinister or just playful.

Yo dawg, there are rancid feet behind you. DO YOU NOT SEE THAT?

To me, The Conjuring felt like it was celebrating horror at its most basic roots. The story itself combines a bit of Poltergeist with The Exorcist, but into its own unique tale. The major elements in this movie are things we have seen before, but the smaller details are what make it something special.

I always talk about how hard it is for me to figure out a rating for a horror movie. Presumably it is based on some hidden formula combing entertainment and scare factor. After all, people go to horror movies to be scared, so if it ends up just being entertaining, you will be disappointed, and if it is just scary imagery, you will be confused.

I think The Conjuring combines these two elements in a pretty even fashion. It didn’t make me jump out of my seat every minute, but after the intro, I found myself at the edge of the seat until the credits rolled. The chill that something could go wrong at any moment stayed with you. It teased really well, and similarly had well placed humor moments just to throw you off guard.

The Conjuring proves that ghosts and hauntings are still scary. but even more surprising is that this movie was also well acted with a decent plot, truly the scariest thing about it. Similarly, this is the first horror I have given this rating in the last two years of hardcore movie watching.

4 out of 4.