James Wan’s The Conjuring opens in 1968 with a doll named Annabelle and a pair of paranormal investigators explaining, patiently, that the doll was never possessed. It was a conduit. That distinction — the thing you fear versus the thing actually doing the work — is the whole engine of the film, and Wan knows it. The Conjuring runs 112 minutes, stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, and was released in the United States and Canada on July 19, 2013, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It grossed over $319 million worldwide against a $20 million budget. It is the inaugural film in The Conjuring Universe franchise.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
The Perrons and the Farmhouse in Harrisville
Three years after the Annabelle case, in 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron move into a farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, with their five daughters: Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy and April. Lili Taylor plays Carolyn. Ron Livingston plays Roger. The family’s dog, Sadie, refuses to enter the house. The family finds a boarded-up cellar. Paranormal events start within the first few nights.
Every clock in the house stops at 3:07 a.m. Carolyn wakes with new bruises each morning. Sadie is found dead in the yard. Carolyn and Christine both encounter a malevolent spirit.
A house that is simply wrong — clocks, bruises, a dog — is more frightening than anything that later crawls out of the dark. The Conjuring understands that the first half of a haunting is domestic, and it plays the Perrons as a family with too many daughters and too little sleep, not as victims waiting to be rescued.
The Warrens Arrive
Carolyn contacts the Warrens, who conduct an initial investigation. Lorraine is a clairvoyant, and during that first pass she sees that a dark entity has latched on to the family so that even leaving the house will not free them.
That is the film’s real threat, and it is a smart one. Most haunted-house stories offer escape as an option. The Conjuring closes it off early. The Warrens then place cameras and bells around the house with the help of their assistant Drew Thomas, played by Shannon Kook, and police officer Brad Hamilton, played by John Brotherton. Farmiga plays Lorraine as tired rather than theatrical. Wilson plays Ed as a man doing a job. Neither performance reaches for the gothic, and the film is better for it.
Based on the true case files of the Warrens.
Bathsheba Sherman and the 3:07 Problem
The film’s backstory, as the Warrens piece it together, holds that the house once belonged to an accused witch and Satanist named Bathsheba Sherman, a relative of Mary Towne Eastey. In that account, Sherman killed her week-old baby as an offering to the devil and then took her own life in 1863, at 3:07 in the morning, after laying a curse on anyone who took her land. The film says later houses built on that land saw a string of murders and suicides over the years.
Bathsheba completely possesses Carolyn.
This is where The Conjuring loses its nerve. The first half runs on restraint; the second half runs on a witch, a curse and a possession, and the specificity that made the Perrons frightening gets traded for a mythology. The 3:07 detail is genuinely good — a time is scarier than a demon. But a cursed land with a body count is a story we have been told many times, and Wan tells it well without telling it new.
What the Cast Carries
Farmiga and Wilson are the reason the franchise exists. Their Warrens are not believers performing for a camera; they are professionals with a marriage, and the film treats Lorraine’s clairvoyance as a burden rather than a superpower. Sterling Jerins plays their daughter Judy.
Taylor is the film’s best asset. Carolyn’s decline is played as exhaustion first, and that reading makes the possession land harder than any contortion would. Livingston has less to do, and the film never quite figures out Roger.
The supporting cast is large: Hayley McFarland as Nancy, Shanley Caswell as Andrea, Mackenzie Foy as Cindy, Joey King as Christine, Kyla Deaver as April.
A Franchise Starter That Peaks Early
The Conjuring is a well-built haunted-house film with a first hour that ranks with the best of its decade and a second hour that settles for a witch. It is the inaugural film in a franchise that would go on to include The Conjuring 2 in 2016, and you can see the blueprint being laid: the Warrens as recurring leads, the case file as an anthology device, the demon as a franchise property.
That is a business observation, not a criticism of the film. The criticism is narrower. The Conjuring is at its best when it is about a house that stops your clocks and bruises your wife. It is at its weakest when it explains why, and the explanation — Bathsheba, the sacrifice, the curse, the land — is the least interesting thing in it.
Key facts
- Release date: July 19, 2013 (United States and Canada)
- Runtime: 112 minutes
- Budget: $20 million
- Worldwide gross: over $319 million
- Metacritic: 68/100
- Score: 6.8 of 10
The Conjuring is a well-made studio horror film, and its strongest material is in the first half. The Warrens work as leads, the Perron house works as a setting, and the 3:07 detail works as a scare. What the film does with all of that in its final act is a different question, and the answer is the least interesting thing in it.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
