The Conjuring

1) I don't know if it was really anything groundbreaking. When this first came out all I heard was "omg scariest movie i've ever seen" and had out-of-control good it was. I'm really not that hard to impress so it's not like this movie had a terribly high burden to overcome. 

2) But don't get me wrong it was okay. That doll was spooky as nuts; the ghost popping up in the little girl's door was creepy, and that whole hand clapping thing would have made me jump if I hadn't seen it on the cover already.

3) Maybe my beef with it isn't so much that it wasn't good, but more so that it just re-invented the wheel. It just seems like a huge mix of other horror movies. It starts off as Dead Silence with the creepy doll that is writing scary shit. It then turns into  The Amityville Horror (and sort of Sinister) where the family moves into a house and shit gets all creepy. It's Poltergeist (and for that matter a little bit of Insidious) where the family has to have some investigators come look into the house. And it concludes with the re-done Exorcist scene that has already had too many knockoffs.

4) Was it scary? Obvi. Was it worth all the hoopla it got? Probably not. Be a good movie to take a LF to go see, but don't be too amped up about it.

B+