The Conjuring: Scary Good

I don't know if its because we had people over and did the whole "lets watch a horror movie" thing with lights off, not too much talking and a midnight start or not but I jumped so many times during The Conjuring that its moved quickly to be my new favourite scary movie.



Its not because this is a super original movie as the story itself is a fairly simple and heavily used one, apparently because it is the most popular American urban legend: happy family moves into house, strange stuff starts happening, haunting ensues.  It has been done before...



What makes up for this is execution: its excellent.  Looking at who is involved it is a bit more evident why this is the case as the writers and directors of The Conjuring all have a lot of good work to their names.

Chad and Casey Hayes, who are listed on IMDB as the writers of The Conjuring, were behind House of Wax, The Reaping and Whiteout:all three movies that I have watched and enjoyed.  House of Wax, perhaps best known for having Paris Hilton in it, is actually on a semi regular rotation in our house just because its such a relaxing little horror movie.

The Director, James Wan, has directed a lot of movies I have enjoyed. No, not Saw.  I am not a fan of the whole torture porn genre and that's what Saw felt like to me; but he has done lots of good ghost stories like Insidious and Dead Silence.  In fact I didn't realise James Wan wrote and directed Dead Silence which I was talking about as being another well executed horror movie in the car with friends after watching The Conjuring.

How is the movie executed so well?  Well lets start with the slow buildup.  The movies take the time to let you get to know the protagonists - the family that has moved into the house, as well as the paranormal investigators that end up trying to help them.

Lovely family... you end up caring about them.
Clearly the parents aren't big on TV given the number of kids

Once you know and care about the protagonists, it begins.

The director uses camera angles really well, limiting the audiences field of view and making rooms seem small and creepy.  You always feel like there could be something just out of the camera's eye waiting to leap out; often there isn't but that sense of dread is such an important part of a horror movie and its done so well in The Conjuring.

Camera Angles... So very well done in The Conjuring

Another really good point of execution was sound effects.  These were subtle and understated in the main and that worked well.  Then there was the lack of creepy lead up music when you knew something bad was coming; the dreadful silence filled only by the breathing of terrified people was so much worse (or the music was really subtle...).

Something the movie doesn't do as well as others is keeping you in the dark.  This is a movie in which you discover everything that's going on and a friend of mine suggested it would have been better if our imaginations were required a bit more at some points (the ghoul reveal is sometimes better really late rather than early in the piece...).  I get that - its a strength of the movie The Blair Witch Project for example - but overall it didn't diminish the experience too much for me.

All in all a really good watch and worth waiting until a dark night with friends - not sure about the marks my wife left in my arm with her nails but always good when a movie gets to her too.  Thinking on it I enjoyed Insidious almost as much and now I cant wait for Insidious 2 and... according to IMDB... The Conjuring 2.

Oh and big selling point: no bloody shaky cam.

The Dead of Winter, Jack Night

Ok so as promised today I am going to do a quick review of The Dead of Winter, by Jack Night.

I picked this one up from Amazon under horror / ghosts because I really wanted  a change of pace from all the science fiction I had been reading and felt like being scared.

Scary Cover.  Check.  

In The Dead of Winter Nick Anderson and his family move into an isolated country town after he writes a successful novel so that he can focus on the next one.  They rent a nice little place at the edge of town and as winter sets in it seems like the perfect place to write a book.  Until Nick's Daughter sees a horrifying apparition out in the woods and strange things start to happen.

As it turns out the town has a dark past that is now coming to light.

Native Americans.  Check.  White Settlers.  Check.  Standing Stones.  Check.

If anything that's the problem with this book.

It checks all the boxes but it didn't end up making me feel scared. Getting the fear into a book is notoriously difficult, more so than a movie, and it felt like it should have worked in this book it just didn't.

At the end of the day I think the problem was that I just didn't end up feeling all that much for the characters in the book.  They needed to be fleshed out more and get me to care for them before the horror really started and that didn't happen.
 
Oh don't get me wrong I enjoyed the book, and its a good read, especially early on it got me hooked quite easily and as it went on threw in some good twists.  Ultimately though it felt like one of those horror movies that slides into an action film early on and turns into a group of people running from one horrifying situation to another with explosions and bullets flying.

So it was a fun read in the end, but it didn't scare me which is what I had wanted.   It was almost, but not quite, there.

Having said that the writer has his own blog (Linky) and this looks like one of the first books he has done (the other being People of the Static).  Its pretty good from that standpoint - especially given how tricky it is to get horror right.

I am the first to admit that just because I didn't find this book scary like I wanted doesn't mean someone else wont either so give it a try.

Right now I am reading book 14  of The Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light, but I wont review that - I am sure there are plenty of reviews out there on it.  At least its an ending which I honestly was starting to wonder if we were going to get (much like Game of Thrones).  I might pick up another horror book to review and see if I cant find one that does leave me scared but otherwise I have been meaning to review The Home by Scott Nicholson or one of the science fiction books I read earlier this year.

So catch you next Sunday.

Horror Movie Review: The Mist, Stephen King

Yes I have been slack.  This is what happens when I don't have deadlines so now every Sunday I am going to try to post something.

To that end I was going to do a review on The Dead of Winter by Jack Night but then realised I was only halfway through...

So instead you get The Mist, a movie adaptation of the short story by Stephen King.

Are those giant worms or tentacles?  Who cares RUN DUDE RUN!
(Always wanted to say that)

The premise of The Mist is a fairly simple one: a group of people are trapped in a country supermarket after a thick mist floods into town and there is something in the mist. 

The story moves quickly to this situation.  A wild storm has swept through town damaging homes and forcing people to get supplies from the supermarket.  Some soldiers are called up to the military base nearby and then an air raid siren begins as the deep, soupy mist rolls in blocking vision from the supermarket windows.

"There is something in the mist" cries a man and the doors are locked.

The people who end up trapped in the supermarket make the movie interesting and if anything they provide the bulk of the horror - although there certainly is something in the mist as they quickly learn.  A mix of locals and "out of towners" in the supermarket is a combustible mix as the stress of the situation begins to take its toll and the differences between people become rapidly pronounced.  

Normally Stephen Kings work has a long buildup with a lot of character development but in the case of The Mist we learn about the characters only as the story develops and that's kind of refreshing - and completely appropriate in generating a feeling that the viewer is an outsider and things are moving out of control.  

The main protagonist is David Drayton, who is not a local and not an "out of towner".  This is illustrated early on when David tells one of the handymen in the supermarket that opening a roller door is stupid because there is something outside and gets told so shut up because they don't care that he is a "big shot artist with connections in New York".    At the same time David's neighbour  a successful lawyer, distrusts him because he thinks he is a local and doesn't believe him when he says he saw something saying that David and the locals are just trying to make him look the fool.

As a character David Drayton is fairly simple.  His son is with him, and the driving force behind all of his actions - he left his wife at home but doesn't seem even remotely concerned about her and never thinks to pick up the phone and give her a call.  It makes him fairly two dimensional but its appropriate to the setting; he is "the good father" and "the voice of reason".

The other major character, and the one that had me grating my teeth but in a good way, is Mrs Carmody.  Mrs Carmody is the local religious fanatic and the mist, and monsters in the mist, give her the perfect opportunity to preach the end of days and get a congregation of scared people converted to her personal religion.  She is a nasty piece of work - early on one of the other characters tells her if she ever needs a friend she just needs to ask and Mrs Carmody tells her she has a friend in god and if she ever needs a friend like her she will squat down and shit her out.  

Again Mrs Carmody is a simple archetype and we don't get much depth to her.  She is simply a fanatic who appears to want to use the situation to get her own cult off the ground (perhaps because she is lonely as a number of characters early in the piece identify her as the local loony). 

Now there are a number of other characters in the movie but its the interplay between Drayton and Carmody, and ultimately their factions, that its about.  Oh there are the monsters in the mist and surviving them is important but this is clearly a journey into how badly people turn when they are trapped and scared not just a monster movie.  

People.  Scary as hell.

Overall I enjoyed the movie and its one which has gone into our collection.  Its tense, generates a sufficient suspension of disbelief to allow the things in the mist to feel real - they are genuinely alien and menacing in their own right - and has the right kind of twists especially towards the end.  Worth watching in fact if only for the ending which felt... right. 

Funnily enough it also has two actresses from The Walking Dead in it too - Laurie Holden and Melissa McBride.  I cant help but feel their characters in this movie may have put them in the front running for the roles in that TV series too!

Once I finish The Dead of Winter I will probably read The Mist just to see if the book is better and will pop a little addendum to this post once I have done that. Otherwise next Sunday, The Dead of Winter gets reviewed.

Regardless I promise, oh two readers, that there will be more regular updates.