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The Month of Horror Day 29: The Conjuring

Basement contributor Matt Bellamy has taken it upon himself to watch and review at least one horror movie a day for the month of October . . . because he's awesome that way! Tonight, Bellamy takes a second look at the best movie the year . . . in Jason's humble/biased opinion.
If you missed experiencing the best horror release of 2013 in theatres, it's available to rent or buy now and I'd highly recommend checking this out immediately, especially seeing as Halloween is just around the corner! I don't want to hype it up too much because yes, there are certainly lots of people who will not appreciate this movie as it's definitely out of place amongst most modern horror--this is not about blood, guts, and gore but instead good old fashioned scares! Today's younger audiences may not gravitate towards content like this and might even think it's "boring" which seems crazy to me but, what can I say, kids these days *shoulder shrug*.

For everyone else though who is sane minded, you are in for a ride. Director James Wan, responsible for kick-starting the 'Saw' franchise, ditches all of that unpleasant "torture porn" and appears to instead be paying homage to such supernatural horror classics like 'The Changeling', 'The Exorcist', and especially 'The Amityville Horror'. It's clear that he holds films like those dearly in his heart or else he wouldn't have come up with something like 'The Conjuring'. Not to say that this all creatively spewed out of his head, the story is based on actual case files, what's on the screen and the handling of the materials though is all him. He has attempted a movie like this before with 'Insidious' which I feel was a valiant effort but the execution was all wrong; a swing and a miss! Perhaps that project was him simply gearing up for this undertaking? I like to think that may have been the case.

The true story of The Warren's, actual husband and wife paranormal investigators, is a good one with lots of rich history to draw from. What transpires over the course of 'The Conjuring' is just one of their many case files and if you've seen the movie and remember the room with all of their trinkets and keepsakes from past incidents then you know there must be a mighty deep well to draw future inspiration from. It's exciting that this movie did as well as it did and went on to become one of the biggest hits of the summer because since then a sequel has been greenlit and will be going into production shortly. I can't wait to see what else will be in store for these characters, respectably played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, as there must be so much more for us to experience. They haven't really been explored in the past, cinematically, so it's about time we paid them their much due attention, keep 'em coming

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