Tag Archives: James Wan

2010, 2010s, B+, Grade, Horror, mystery, Past, Review, review-movie, supernatural, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Insidious: Chapter 2 – 2013

October 9, 2021 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	James Wan
Principal Cast	Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert Rose Byrne as Renai Lambert Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier Ty Simpkins as Dalton Lambert Andrew Astor as Foster Lambert
Release Date	2013
Language(s)	English
Running Time	106 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

Note: This review contains spoilers for: Insidious.

Director James Wan’s sequel to Insidious opens in the past. A young Elise (Lindsay Seim) makes her initial visit to Lorraine (Jocelin Donahue) and Josh (Garrett Ryan) after being called as an additional line of help by her friend and fellow-psychic, Carl (Hank Harris ), who finds himself unable to deal with old woman spirit (Tom Fitzpatrick) haunting Josh. Elise hypnotizes Dalton to make him more suggestible and asks him to reveal information on the old woman. She searches the house in order to confront the malevolent entity. As the events of the night continue, Josh gets up and starts speaking to an entity who no one else can see, psychic gifts or otherwise. Josh leads the entity to a location in the house and points to the location at which point, due to his inexplicable behavior and the nature of the spirit, Elise recommends “sealing” his astral projection gifts away.

The bright red title card drops in as a sea of violent noises come to a crescendo. However, the malevolent color is displaced by a spectral blue that comes from the reveal of the “Chapter 2” in the title. A lantern similar to the ones used in the “further” goes across the title card, letting the viewer know that unlike the first film which had to tease the metaphysical, this film is more than ready to dive into supernatural hijinks.

Drawing to a close, the title sequence ends on a red door, and the camera glides through it and the dark void it opens to towards a faraway light in the distance. Eventually, the camera gets to the light, which turns out to be a lamp lighting a room where Renai (Rose Byrne) is being interrogated by a police officer over the death of Elise (Lin Shaye), an action which is revealed to the viewer at the end of Insidious as having been committed by a recently possessed Josh. Renai recalls finding Elise’s limp body and then finding the photograph of the old woman before running into an emotionally off Josh at the scene of the crime; her doubts were set then and have only continued to fester, but without definitive proof of her husband being possessed or just off, she has to learn to work with him . She confirms to the detective that she doesn’t think her husband is responsible for Elise’s death before going back home to continue dealing with the supernatural mess still wreaking havoc in the Lambert’s lives.

Chapter 2, as such, is split between telling two tales: the first follows the way the ‘Further’ intermingles and intervenes in the Lamberts life and the second explores the background of the spirit possessing Josh. While both stories inform and effect one another, the former is markedly more original and ambitious and gives the mechanics of the Insidious franchise a put-togetherness that other supernatural outings wish they could achieve. Comparatively, the latter story is contrived, not as tight, and plays like a series of lost opportunities, often settling for horror in the moment as opposed to building to larger moments of intense panic. While the nature of what’s revealed in this second narrative thread is “shocking” at a surface level, it does nothing to develop either the film’s themes or the themes of its prequel in nearly as effective a manner as the first narrative thread.

This first story takes the building blocks established in the first movie and expands on the metaphysical makeup of its supernatural domain: the ‘Further’, a place where circuits of desire are repeated while specters engage in the same acts over and over again in loop. This time the narrative focus is less on the domain itself and more on the the effects it has on the living world. It’s not the mechanics of the ‘Further’ which are explored as much as the way the domain intervenes in the world of the living, tying seemingly disparate moments together. Consequently, the film revels in building up scenes from one vantage point and then exploring them again from the other domain; the interplay between these jumps from the “real” world to the ‘Further’ and back again gives Wan an and scriptwriter Leigh Whannell more than enough space to explore creative spectral interplays.

Unfortunately, these mechanics are barely utilized to their fullest and are leveraged in service of the second story, which, while not being incompetently constructed, lacks the nuance or creativity of the first film. While the first story feels like an extension of the Lambert’s conflicts from the first film, the second story feels largely separated. The struggles depicted in the former have a texture and feeling because there’s a sense of empathy in the helplessness and nature of what’s going on, but the tribulations in the latter feel overly theatric and break the sense of immersion generated by the former. Realism takes a seat back to spectacle, and the themes get lost in translation, as the viewer focuses on terror for terrors sake as opposed to terror in serve of a larger thematic movement. As a result, visceral moments in the film shock when presented but don’t have the same staying power as the scenes from the initial Insidious which linger in the viewer’s memory long after.

This is a shame because the first story could have served as the basis for the investigation the second story ventured on if better attention was given to the nature of Josh’s possession. As a location, the ‘Further’ gives fertile ground to explore the way trauma unfurls. Like the first film demonstrates, spirits are trapped into cycles of repetition and are made to re-enact their trauma ad-infinitum. Seemingly unable to find peace, it seems that being a trapped within the ‘Further’ is a horrific fate that any entity would seek to escape, but the furthest the film goes towards exploring that idea, a great source of motivation which could have served as the basis of the second story’s mystery, is having a character mention the idea off-hand a few times. Instead of just saying it, the film could have built on this idea visually and tied it to the Lambert’s struggle to find a locus of healing and stability. Wan and his production team do a great job at evoking ethereal and inexplicable horror, but it feels like they barely scratched the surface of demonstrating the brutality of the material they’re working with, choosing instead to go for familiar and easy-to-explain over ambitious and potentially more confusing. For example, there’s a great set piece involving a host of covered bodies but by the end of the film the scene says very little besides “evil exists”. It’s just unsettling imagery that disturbs momentarily before being cast aside.

Thankfully, lack of memorable scares does not entail lack of memorable moments and Wan and Whannell still manage to leverage the better parts of the story to great effect, satisfyingly bringing the prequel’s story to a resolute close. There are a few hiccups getting to this ending, but eventually, when Chapter 2’s two story threads come together, the narrative proper is allowed to go full throttle towards an emotionally satisfying finish line that concludes (almost) all the relevant story threads on a nice ending point. While this sequel entry isn’t as strong a stand-alone as Wan’s initial foray in to the supernatural genre, it’s certainly a good enough follow-up that fans of the original should check it out. It does what all good sequels should attempt to do: extend the interesting ideas of the first movie without re-hashing them in boring fashion. Just because the film doesn’t elevate all the interesting ideas to their potential, it does more than enough to distinguish itself from and progress its prequel.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Insidious: Chapter 2 is a film that serves up many of the same thrills of its prequel in terms of ambiance and technical construction, while bringing many plot threads to a neat and resolute end-point. While it settles for cheaper scares than its worldbuilding allows, thus squandering some of its potential, it delivers more than enough intrigue to keep fans of the original and those interested more broadly in supernatural horror and its related mechanics intrigued from start to finish. It may not nail all it’s beats, but it’s certainly a good deal more fun than many of its peers.
Rating	7.9/10
Grade	B

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2020s, 2021, A+, Crime, Grade, Horror, mystery, Past, Review, review-movie, slasher, supernatural, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Malignant – 2021

September 11, 2021 The Critic 2 Comments

Director(s)	James Wan
Principal Cast	Annabelle Wallis as Madison /Emily Maye Maddie Hasson as Sydney George Young as Detective Shaw Michole Briana White as Detective Moss
Release Date	2021
Language(s)	English
Running Time	111 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.

It’s hard to believe that a storyline involving a psychic monster capable of brutally murdering scientists, inept help from the relevant authorities, a woman who has psychic visions of a black-robed murderer who contorts and viciously slices apart its victims, and meticulously crafted murder set pieces is the basis of a James Wan horror movie when it feels like something plucked out of Dario Argento’s giallo playbook, in particular his fever dream film, Phenomena. In other words, the movie is a showcase of spectacle; the point is not the narrative but the audio-visual journey. Extravagance matters more than plot, which functions more as a vehicle for Wan to canvas off of. He’s always been a stylistic director, but Malignant showcases the height of his visual prowess; it’s an absolute treat to behold.

The movie starts with a small taste of things to come as the walls of a institutional facility are drenched with blood. Dr. Florence Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie) escorts a group, which includes an officer with a gun, towards a room where people are flung out with bloody aplomb. She instructs them to shoot the patient, Gabriel, who is causing all the issues. The group suffers heavy casualties, but the nature of Gabriel along with his powers is left to the viewer’s imagination as the film cuts to twenty-eight years later.

A woman, Madison (Annabelle Wallis ), argues with her husband, Derek (Jake Abel) over the nature of her pregnancies, which seem to always terminate in miscarriages. He viciously attacks her for inability to conceive and beats her against the wall, causing the back of her head to bleed. Madison locks the door to keep safe from her husband, but then nighttime comes and a shadowy assassin makes its presence known. Its form is just a shadow creeping, and Wan teases the audience slowly with its presence before letting the violence continue; the husband is stabbed with no hesitation before Madison herself is thrown on the floor.

She wakes up at the hospital where she reunites with her sister, Sydney (Maddie Hasson). We learn that the siblings haven’t had contact with one another due to Derek’s controlling nature; he stopped Madison from reaching out. Thus, the black-coated figures first kill marks the end of the estrangement between Madison and her sibling and the start of her journey to move past and overcome her trauma at the hands of abuse.

However, later at night, Madison realizes that after this attack she’s now linked to the black-coated figure and can see the murders committed by the figure as they’re happening. These psychic drop-ins, which feel like the pensieve from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, feature the walls around our protagonist dissolving and reforming around her. Within crisp and fluid shots, Madison is transported from wherever she is to the scene of the next assault. Desperate to figure out the reason for this connection, she tasks Detectives Shaw (George Young) and Moss (Michole Briana White) along with Sydney in an race against time before the killer is allowed to strike again.

Wan said he wanted Malignant to be his take on giallo and the film more than delivers a set-up let lets him have fun. ^[1]Navarro, M. (2021, September 1). “My version OF GIALLO”: James wan lets us know what to expect from his new horror Movie ‘Malignant’ [Interview]. Bloody Disgusting! Retrieved … Continue readingThere’s a mysterious killer in possession of a distinctive weapon, brutal murders, a race to figure out the identity of the murderer, and law enforcement characters who are meant to help but who actively inhibit the protagonist while bumbling around. However, penchant of any great gialli, like the ones made by Argento and Bava, is to structure the violence with great care around fluid and dramatic camera moves which transform the macabre into the sensational. Malignant nails all of this and more. The plot moves along at a pace that keeps the audience invested until a reveal 30 minutes before the ending which then ratchets the film into an utterly enthralling cinematic experience that any fan of sensual cinema should watch. It’s entirely unpredictable; even if you guess one element of the way events will unfold, the entirety of the combined threads is something that can only be described as Shymalanesque in the best possible way.

Wan, who has always been stylistically talented, is allowed to push the boundaries on his own patterns. While the movie starts slow with some of his trademark sequences, like a tense overhead tracking shot which follows the characters as they navigate a household à la The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, it really starts to show its hand once Madison is allowed to “dissolve” into the psychic visions that she’s made to see. The transitions are as evocative as the murders which follow and serve a purpose in delineating the contours of Madison’s psyche. As the film continues and Madison is allowed to explore the connection, its visualization changes in ways to reflect the same.

However, what pushes Malignant over the edge is the vitality and fury by which Wan shoots some of the larger set-pieces, moments which blow out scenes from even movies, including even Wan’s own Aquaman. The camera is an assassin and follows the path of blood and carnage with surgical precession. Every blow is brutal. Every slice is sinister. Every moment is an extension of the dance of the fabulous blood-bath. He lets the impact of the ferocity sit with the audience as the frame sticks on the murders unbroken. There may be a lot of the stereotypical horror movie teasing with the slow set-ups and the disappearing shadows, but the pay-off is bloody, excessive, beautiful, and utterly worth every moment in wait – a carnivalesque celebration of blood and splatter.

The supernatural slasher often takes place in rooms lit by rich reds and glowing greens along with rooms dyed in shades of dark blue and pockets of darkness. Often times, the camera glides from one room to another, swinging between colors in a way to accentuate the visual momentum of the spectacle occurring. Even though some of the needle drop moments feel like they could have been timed to synch up with the emotional intensity of the film a bit better, most of Joseph Bishara’s electric score fulfills what it sets out to do – provide a companion to the visuals that can match their energy. Many of the tracks inject a head-bobbing energy that add a fiery intensity to the scenes. The combination of both elements creates dynamite film-making that serves as proof that some things have to be seen on the big screen to be experienced in their full glory.

While there are some plot issues here and there, the muscular film-making put on display by Wan is more than worth witnessing for fans of the genre and for those people looking for a off-the-walls story to have fun with. It’s more than just stylistic homage. Malignant is a celebration of sheer and utter excess in the best of ways. It’s the best of Wan’s artillery amplified to the next level – truly bravura filmmaking.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Since his horror debut with Saw, Wan has put out some of the most well-loved horror classics. Insidious galvanized a new-age of horror fans and The Conjuring confirmed that his arrival was no fluke. Malignant is a confirmation of the director’s potential and showcases some of the highest highs in his oeuvre as of yet.
Rating	9.0/10
Grade	A

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2010s, 2016, A+, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, supernatural, Thriller, Year

FIlm Review: The Conjuring 2 – 2016

February 2, 2020 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	James Wan
Principal Cast	Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren Patrick Wilson as Ed Warren Madison Wolfe as Janet Hodgson Frances O’Connor as Peggy Hodgson
Release Date	2016
Language(s)	English
Running Time	134 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

A view of a suburban neighborhood transforms into a more intimate encounter as the camera glides from the street through a window pane into the attic of a specific house – the Amityville residence. When Drew (Shannon Cook), the Warren’s technician shows up in the room to set up a camera, it becomes apparent that the duo is here attempting to solve the infamous Amityville case.

Lorraine(Vera Farmiga) and Ed(Patrick Wilson) get ready to investigate the Amityville house.

On cue, both Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) appear seated in the living room, setting up a séance with the family residing in the abode. The camera slowly pushes in on Lorraine. Her eyes are lit differently indicating she’s engaging in her spiritual sight. Eventually, the camera settles on a close-up of her face. Her eyes open, and the camera pulls back out to a darkened room. Lorraine is the only person in the area who still retains a vitality, a spark that gives her a color that the others in the room no longer possess.

Lorraine’s (Vera Farmiga) astral projection walks around the Amityville residence as her corporeal body sits with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and the house’s residents.

Her astral form exits the room, leaving her body behind with the others in the realm of the living. She goes up the stairs and is met with a couple, a man and a woman, in their bedroom. The man has a gash in his body. The woman is sitting facing away from Lorraine. Suddenly, the film cuts, jumping forward. The woman stares at Lorraine and interrogates her. In response, Lorraine reloads an imaginary gun and shoots the woman. Another jump cut and the woman lays dead next to her husband. A close-up of her visage on a family photograph appears briefly. Without saying anything, it’s apparent that Lorraine is using her psychic vision to roleplay the events of the Amityville massacre, allowing herself to be possessed by the events of the house in an attempt to figure everything out.

Lorraine(Vera Farmiga) is “possessed” by the real killer as she investigates what really happened.

More murders follow in similar fragmented manner until Lorraine jolts in horror at the scenarios she’s been forced to replay. Her emotions break through from the astral realm to the realm of the living, as her physical body reacts in much the same way. Ed, worried about his wife’s distress, asks her to call off the endeavor and return to her body. But Lorraine refuses and seeks to carry on.

A child with white eyes stares at Lorraine.

She follows a spectral child who leads her to a host of ghost kids. The group stares at an object which Lorraine disrobes and reveals to be a mirror. A figure in the glass’s reflection stares at her. Lorraine turns back to confront the figure. There’s nothing. She turns back to look at the mirror. Now the figure, a demonic Nun (Bonnie Aarons) is staring directly at her. Another turn back. Nothing. When she turns her head back to the mirror, the Nun appears outside of it and proceeds to choke her.

But the Nun’s hands are then revealed to be Lorraine’s hands after all. Where did the creature go and what did it want? Suddenly, Lorraine sees a vision conjured by the Nun. A man is impaled in brutal fashion. While the visage of the figure is unknown to us, it’s clear that the demonstration means something to Lorraine.

Lorraine(Vera Farmiga) screams due to the vision.

She screams at its site as the film cuts from the astral world back to the corporeal world. The camera pulls out from her face, indicating that her encounter with the abyss is over for now. She reaches out to her husband and indicates that her experience is the “closest to hell” she ever wants to get to. The two stare at each other and the frame freezes.

A text crawl appears and explains that the Amityville case, the case we were just presented, serves as a good benchmark for the case The Conjuring 2 to explore. This time instead of the United States, the Warren’s are called to Enfield, England to deal with a haunting troubling the Hodgson family. Thus, the story proper can start; the stakes and rules of the spectral world are fully set.

In similar fashion to The Conjuring, director James Wan’s sequel follows the Warrens as they attempt to exorcist the spirits tormenting an innocent family. The story even adopts a similar structure as its predecessor and leaps back and forth between Warrens and the family they’re helping out, developing both sets of characters to raise the stakes for the finale. However, in The Conjuring 2′s case, the narrative regarding the family in question is far more focused and multifaceted. There’s a clear presentation of the family’s inner dynamics and an explanation for why and how they react to the adversities they face in the way they do.

The most important difference between the two films, however, is that this entry demonstrates and ties the nature of the Hodgson’s family’s empirical woes to their supernatural struggles, thereby giving a much-needed depth to the spectral spectacles Wan chooses to employ. ^[1] This is in reference to my discussion of Stephen King’s analysis of The Amityville Horror in my The Conjuring review. Check it out there for more context. While specters and demons are frightening in a visceral sense, real terror arises when those creatures represent something larger than themselves, a symbol of the more insidious terrors lying beneath the surface. Here the source of the family’s discord is tied to their newly missing father figure who left the Hodgson’s for another family, so the nature of the haunting they experience is that sense of abandonment come to life in ghostly form.

Additionally, as the opening demonstrates, the film’s focus on exploring and providing a more robust metaphysical explanation of the supernatural buttresses theatrical moments which would otherwise deflate the tension. By choosing to delve into the metaphysical aspect of the sub-genre in a manner more akin to his opaquer Insidious franchise’s “The Further”, Wan is able to provide a vantage point by which to interpret the seemingly random supernatural happenings in a manner which strengthens the film’s themes as opposed to feeling haphazard. However, instead of basking in explanation or set-up like he does in that franchise, Wan chooses to demonstrate the rules of supernatural engagement in this film via the camera movements. Push-ins indicate the presence of the supernatural and push-outs demonstrate the resolution of that presence. Consequently, Wan utilizes both camera moves in relation to both persons and locations to clue the viewer into when something otherworldly is happening. On top of serving as visual motif, the movement allows Wan to employ match cuts to hide and allow for stellar in-camera tricks. Just like Juraj Herz does in The Cremator, Wan pushes in on faces to disguise transformations in the set, seamlessly allowing the film to transition from and to areas in slick fashion.

These changes on the initial film’s formula give the sequel a springboard to jump off of which prevents the experience from feeling ham-fisted. Thus, for the most part, Wan gets to have his cake and eat it too; the theatricality and kinetic frenzy of his direction is given ample room to express itself without ever undermining the emotionally resonant story it’s meant to help tell. As a sequel, The Conjuring 2 does everything it should: it expands the scope of the original story in believable fashion while remaining consistent with the feeling and polish fans have come to expect.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Conjuring 2 is the rare sequel that exceeds its original, improving on not only the narrative but also the cinematic presentation of the same. There’s a care given to developing the characters, both the family being haunted and the Warrens who seek to assist, that gives the film a depth that sustains it even during the more grandiose moments. While fans of the original will surely delight in the machinations presented here, the film’s more pronounced ambitions, namely demonstrated via its camera movements, might win over viewers who found the previous entry too simple for their tastes.
Rating	9.6/10
Grade	A+

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2010s, 2013, A, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, supernatural, Thriller, Year

Film Review: The Conjuring – 2013

January 22, 2020 The Critic Leave a comment

Director(s)	James Wan
Principal Cast	Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren Patrick Wilson as Ed Warren Lili Taylor as Carolyn Perron
Release Date	2013
Language(s)	English
Running Time	112 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

The camera pushes out on the Annabelle doll.

We open on a shot of a doll, Annabelle, staring directly at the us. The camera pushes out as we hear a pair of nurses recount their story regarding the doll to two unseen figures who flank them from both sides. The nurses explain that the doll asked for permission to move in with them, they gave that permission thinking the doll was a ghost, and then they experienced hauntings due to it. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, they cannot get rid of the doll. They ask the unseen figures to help.

These figures, Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) Warren finally come into frame; they explain that the nurses are dealing not with a ghost but with a demon. We see a repetition of the first shot; the nurses are still being flanked by the Warrens on both sides, but this time the Warrens are visible. Their presence has come into effect and they’re in “control”. We cut once again to the face of the Annabelle doll before the screen gets grainy, and it’s revealed that what we’ve been watching is actually a tape recorded by the Warrens for presentation purposes in a classroom setting. Without knowing it, we’ve adopted the Warren’s point of view and been sucked into their world.

Under the title card resides a window encased in shadows.

It’s at this time the title crawl pops on the screen, informing us of the Warren’s history and the fact that what we’re about to watch is “based on the true story”. The camera continues tilting down past the title of the movie to a window right beneath; a seamless transition that lets us know that we’re entering the horror immediately. The darkness around the window fades away while the camera pushes forward, revealing a car and a moving truck driving towards the house. We see a the Perron family come out; we know that their upcoming journey will be one of terror. The camera tracks left to follow the family as they make their way in through the front door; the way the camera moves from the window to the door makes it feel like the house is alive and waiting for its upcoming owners.

Most of the family, a set of parents and five daughters, makes their way into the house. However, their dog, Sadie, refuses to come in. The camera moves down towards the floor, and hones in on the dog who refuses attempts to be coaxed into the house. Even if you didn’t know about the horror tropes regarding dogs being able to sense the supernatural, this disagreeable behavior is more than enough to confirm what we already know: bad times are coming.

Cindy (Mackenzie Foy) calls out to April.

The Zombie’s “Time of the Season” plays in the background as Wan employs a fantastic tracking shot showcasing the family moving into the house. The eerie mood that’s been set up gives way for a few moments, while we get a “tour” of the entire house. One of the kids, Cindy (Mackenzie Foy) looks around for her windchimes to place at the front of the house; an source of music tries to establish its place . As she puts them up, she calls out to her younger sister, April (Kyla Deaver), to come into the house. Unbeknownst to her, April found a music box hidden under an ominous looking tree. She plays the music box at which point “Time of the Season” stops and the lighting becomes much darker; a nefarious source of music usurps the light and takes control.

The girls eat dinner and then play a variant of clapping hide-and-seek where the seeker has to place a blindfold on and gets to ask the hiders to clap up to 3 times to figure out where they are. The innocuous game meant to facilitate the girls finding one another fails, as instead, the girls end up finding the dark curse embedded in the house by cracking a barrier sealing the basement. This dark, grimy, underbelly of the house is thus unleashed and the “fun” truly begins.

Like his previous foray into the supernatural genre, Insidious , director James Wan’s The Conjuring also functions as a facelift of an older titan, or in this case titans, of the supernatural horror genre; this time he’s updating The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Exorcist instead of Poltergeist. From The Amityville Horror, he takes idea of a haunted house terrorizing a family, the theatricality of the haunting, and the subtext of economic plight in relation to haunting. There are multiple comments from the the father of the family, Roger (Ron Livingston) indicating that the family’s money is tied to the house and they have no way out, which solves any practical concerns we could raise to the family staying in such a location. From The Exorcist, he takes the notion of treating the supernatural as grounded and the idea of a metaphysical evil fighting a metaphysical good. Especially by the ending, it becomes clear that Wan is trying to introduce a notion of God and “true goodness” as a way to elevate the status of the haunting. The end result of combining all these factors would be a serious haunted house story with plenty of subtext to go around.

However, the end-result lands a bit ajar from this expectation. Unlike The Amityville Horror, The Conjuring is missing a scene of “honest” drama that ties the Perron family’s financial woes directly to the nature of the haunting. As Stephen King says, “Everything which The Amityville Horror does well is summed up in that scene,” whose implications make the connection between the haunted house and the financial troubles of the family clear. ^[1] King, S. (2010). Danse macabre. Gallery. Furthermore, the gravitas of The Exorcist arises from both the documentary-like shooting of the movie, which helps ground the horrific nature of the haunting and the honesty and severity by which it wrestles with the ideas of God and the divine. The theatricality Wan is going for runs against this and makes the depth he’s trying to achieve feel forced especially near the end of the film which is more focused on spectacle rather than spiritual catharsis.

But by pushing these ideas together and presenting them with his knack for dynamic set-pieces, Wan has still ended up creating one of the best horror movies of this side of the century and a blockbuster at that. By grounding the possession story via two families – one regular and powerless and the other spiritual and powerful – Wan is able to ensure that the hauntings, while not as thematically rich and textured as their base ideas would allow, have enough of a thematic throughline to develop on.

Wan spends a just enough time letting us breathe with the Perron’s, namely the girls, as they get try and adjust to the house. We get to hear some of their bickering and get a feeling for what their sisterly dynamic looks like. By the time the supernatural rumblings start, we have a good understanding of their personalities along with a few of their quirks – just enough to latch onto when the theatrics take hold.

The crux of the character work comes from the other family, the Warrens, who are given nearly as much, if not more, screen time than the haunted family themselves; this move is an improvement on even Insidious, whose attempts at giving the “exorcist” type character a more textured backstory is one of the better narrative pivots in the supernatural genre. The reason this usually never happens ,sans the best cases like The Exorcist, is because movies usually wants to spend their time building up our attachment to the subject of the hauntings so we care about what’s happening to them. As a result, there’s usually never time in the screen-play to develop the spiritual-type character to a level we care about.

Wan side-steps this issue by splitting screen-time between the two families and having their stories run in parallel to one another: usually, when something horrific happens to the Perron’s, we cut back to the Warrens. These cuts not only give the time needed to get to know and care about the Warren’s involvement in the story but also give Wan a way to neatly exposit to the us without it feeling ostentatious. He disguises the rules of the supernatural genre in scenes like interviews and college lectures; these movements not only give Via Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, the movie’s best two actors, time to show their chops, but they also help make sense of the hauntings proper. In one key scene transition, the Warrens explaining the sequencing of a haunting: infestation, oppression, possession; this is a perfect mapping for the three act structure of the movie and helps clue the audience in on how to interpret the “why” for the spectral occurrences.

Now, while I personally don’t enjoy the more grandiose spectacles The Conjuring goes for, I can appreciate the craft behind them, especially in the way they’re built up. By using longer than average takes and moving the camera along with the characters as they venture the house, Wan is able to generate a sense of constant paranoia; the stakes are apparent but there’s no way to escape the stifling tension. When the theatricalities begin, there’s little reliance on the distracting CGI that plagues many similarly plotted movies with many of the sequences utilizing in-camera tricks and practical effects. These make the the monstrosities feel like they have a physical presence which in turn exacerbates the feeling that the characters are always in a genuine danger.

This commitment to genuinely scaring the audience is why The Conjuring endures almost a decade after it’s release as a common favorite among the masses. In spite of narrative issues, the film manages to follow a distilled horror formula that emphasizes authenticity in the spectacle while remaining fun throughout it’s runtime. Wan knows how to distinguish the movie in just the right places, ensuring that the scares are well-earned and leave a lasting impact.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Conjuring is confirmation of Wan’s talent in the horror genre and is proof that highly polished horror blockbusters are possible. The movie is technically precise and features gorgeous camera work that one can’t help but admire and get wrapped up in. Though the story isn’t Wan’s most memorable, it manages to serve as a more than serviceable vehicle for lulling and scaring the audience; in other words, it’s a great time.
Rating	8.8/10
Grade	A

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2010, 2010s, A, Grade, Horror, mystery, Review, review-movie, supernatural, Thriller, Year

Film Review: Insidious – 2010

January 22, 2020 The Critic 1 Comment

Director(s)	James Wan
Principal Cast	Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert Rose Byrne as Renai Lambert Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier Ty Simpkins as Dalton Lambert Andrew Astor as Foster Lambert
Release Date	2010
Language(s)	English
Running Time	110 minutes
Report Card	Click to go Review TLDR/Summary

We open on a large lightbulb before the camera flips itself around 180° – the world we’re entering is not one that plays by our expectations. The camera tracks revealing a young boy sleeping before moving right to traverse the rest of the house. Discordant strings rise in the background as a shadowy figure shows up on a wall – a confirmation that we’ve entered a whole new world. Finally, the moves past the figure to reveal a Woman in Black, smiling and standing still in the center of the frame; in her hand, she holds a red candle with a bright flame – the only light in a screen full of darkness.

The screech of the strings reaches its apex as the bright hellish red title card comes onto the screen. Every other image after in the title sequence features a black-and-white image of a location and red font that slowly fades away as an ethereal gray wisp spelling the same words comes out of the initial word, almost like the spirit of the words taking leave. Many locations and objects show up multiple times, priming the viewer for their future appearance’s. Some of the frames reveal ghostly figures hiding in the shadows while others showcase spectral happenings like chairs moving by themselves. This seemingly innocuous presentation is anything but and primes the audience for spectral encounters to come by sowing the seeds with an assortment of images whose meanings are yet to be shown.

Eventually the montage ends and the camera pushes in slowly on a clock surrounded by shadows before the screen turns completely black. A woman, Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne), happens to be sleeping. As she wakes up, the color in frame gradually returns. Sleep is over and the time for waking is here.

Renai (Rose Byrne) stands with a clock behind her.

Renai goes down the stairs. Behind her is the clock that’s been featured multiple times already – a harbinger of doom. She takes out some books from the moving boxes scattered around the cluttered study and puts them up. The title of the book in front reads: “Self-Healing Through Music.”

After putting the books up, Renai has to deal with her 3 children: Dalton (Ty Simpkins), Foster (Andrew Astor), and Kali, the infant in the group. She gets their affairs in order during a hectic kitchen scene where her husband, Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson), offers very little help. However, upon leaving the room she sees her books have now been scattered on the floor – a sign of things to come. Frustrated, she confronts her family who claims they had nothing to do with it. Unable to get any answers, she asks Josh to help with the kids and school – a request he denies to be apparently being busy. Her exasperation grows and the scene concludes with an establishing shot of the house, tracking from left to right.

Afterwards, the camera tracks onto Renai playing the piano. The books have now gained an additional purpose besides source of first supernatural sign: they are Renai’s work tools. She’s a musician trying to compose. Immediately it’s clear: this moment of musical creation is the overworked matriarch’s reprieve from her daily duties. Unfortunately, the specters seem to understand this as well and refuse to let her have her time. The baby monitor which has been creeping on the frame in the corner takes center place as the cries of the child interrupt the music and force Renai to come upstairs.

Upon ensuring Kali’s safety, Renai sees a door that draws her forward. She opens it and goes up to the attic of the house where she sees both a ladder and a lightbulb. A lightbulb starts the film and it appears here once again, enticing Renai to turn it on. She climbs the ladder and tries to grab the switch; upon doing so, the rung she’s standing on breaks. Immediately, a bright red-hot fire starts on its own from a furnace near the bottom of the floor. Just like the opening, the presence of a bulb is followed by the presence of an ominous red fire surrounded by blackness. It’s no coincidence that the bulb is above and the furnace is below; the use of red is evocative of hell and the flames associated with the damned location. Coming up here was a mistake – now the fire has started.

Nighttime comes and with it comes the start of the Lambert family problems. Dalton goes upstairs to the same room while wearing a red superhero cape. As any hero would do, he tries to bring the light; just like his mom, he gets up on the ladder to reach the switch, but unfortunately for him, the broken step in the ladder gives way underneath him and he crashes, falling unconscious momentarily. His parents realize he’s missing and run up to him to find him conscious but in pain. They get him all fixed up and put him into his bed before themselves retiring for the night. The couple finally unwinds as Renai talks about her music and her hopes for the future. The two laugh and call it a night.

Then the ticking of the clock starts; a momentum builds as the hypnotic rhythm cascades through the house. We see a series of images as the clock’s pulse continues: a leaking faucet, Foster asleep in his bed, Kali asleep in her crib with an ominous red light illuminating the room, Renai and Josh soundly asleep. Finally, we cut to Dalton and the hypnotic lull of the ticking clock stops. The camera pushes in slowly towards him and the darkness surrounding him. All the while the sound intensifies transforming from a low buzzing to a violent set of discordant noises – a callback to the title card’s ominous arrival.

The next day comes and Josh comes in to Dalton’s room to wake the still sleeping child. He repeatedly asks Dalton to awaken but comes to realize his son is unresponsive. A quick hospital later confirms that the aspiring superhero is in a coma like state with no apparent medical explanation. The narrative jumps forward 3 months as the camera tracks on the house again this time from right to left – the situation for the Lambert’s has changed once again as they find themselves taking care of their still-comatose son while eerie and supernatural events continue to pile up in their everyday lives.

In 20 minutes, Insidious has established a family dynamic with nuances in the main members of the grouping and set in motion a series of visual motifs – the color red, lighting up dark spaces, the baby monitor, music, the “presence” of the house – that will build to patterns of terror all while never jumping the shark. Similar to Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers, the driving force propelling Insidious is based on the anxiety that the “modern” family is unable to secure itself against outside forces that threaten it; in this case, the parents are unable to protect their son.

As the opening shows, the couple has made the move to provide a new start for their family. Renai is overworked but hopeful for change, Josh is supportive of his wife and children but isn’t the most helpful partner at home, and Dalton is a young boy looking to be an purveying hero. In spite of their struggles, they hold on to the hopes for a better tomorrow. This is why their son’s condition and the family’s subsequent trials are so cruel and poignant: the journey delves into dark places where the failures and traumas of the family, left unresolved, will come to roost among their unsuspecting children.

These fears are allowed to roost because Director James Wan is more than content letting the feeling of unease build up slowly in service of letting the genuine moments of fear terrorize the audience in poignant fashion. By setting up patterns and building up the tension and letting the spectral occurrences linger in ambiguous contexts, forcing the audience to stew in their nescience, Wan gives his film that quality which all the best horrors have – the ability to get under the skin without one being aware of the same. Motifs become patterns which anticipate a future without giving it away, so Wan is able to employ them in tandem to keep building up just until the right moment. This is also why Wan can go against expected evaluation of some of these patterns; because their teloses are unknown, they can be repurposed to pull off unpredictable story moves. By the end of the film, all these moving parts become intimately linked with one another and act as puzzle pieces for the viewer to finally piece together to come to an understanding, an understanding whose ambiguous underpinnings allow Wan to pull a Silence of the Lambs style moment that truly has to be witnessed first-hand.

It’s funny because despite borrowing so much from Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist, Insidious does much of what the former film did: offer a breath of fresh air on the “haunted house” story. Like Hooper, Wan pushes the boundaries on what hauntings can entail and do. In fact, I would argue that Insidious is a breath of fresh air for the genre and offers an overhaul on the “haunted house” story in much the same as Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist did. Hooper’s film offers a positive interpretation of the supernatural alongside a negative one and demonstrates the way that specters operate and link up in parallel with one another. In this way it ties the nature of its families hauntings to social happenings in a larger sense, serving as a larger take on the American Dream and the powers of family. As evidenced above, Insidious does much of the same but focuses less on the social commentary of the hauntings than on the metaphysical breakdown of how those hauntings occur and interact with the world.

The film’s key contribution to the cannon is its exploration of “The Further”, the film’s term for the supernatural realm that houses specters. At one point, the Lambert’s ask a psychic, Elise (Lin Shaye), to help them with their son and her crew, method of investigation, and treatment procedure which involve “The Further”. These scenes and the ideas visually present in them are distinct and evocative all at once, giving Insidious a wholly unique aesthetic and set of rules for supernatural engagement. There are more ideas regarding the supernatural in here than in 5 other lesser movies put together. Despite using Poltergeist and its ideas as a base, Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell don’t remain complacent and push the boundaries on what hauntings can entail and do.

Alas, Insidious is unable to fully tap into the potential its framework allows and settles for oddities that feel like they would have benefited more from structure. Ambiguity is great, but tying that ambiguity to thematic purpose on top of setting up narrative surprises helps those moments play more effective. They gain an emotional resonance because they speak to something larger and end up being more memorable. While Insidious does a great job at navigating the contours of its family’s personal struggles, it lacks the depth to make those struggles touch on other issues, reducing the story’s reach. Given just how much leverage “The Further” gives Wan and Whannell, it feels a tad disappointing that they don’t probe into larger questions.

Yet, Insidious has to be applauded trying something new and doing it with such technical fluidity. There’s a propulsion to the way the narrative unfolds and the pressure constantly ratchets up. Recurrent motifs and discordant strings help make the journey towards the eventual scares all the more dreadful as Wan allows the anticipation to build to a fever pitch before giving the audience a chance for release. There’s no cheap throwaway moment here and even if not all the pieces line up the way they should at all times, the extended durations showcasing when they do work more than make up for any disgruntles.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Insidious’s propulsive narrative, technically sumptuous filmmaking, and innovative takes on the “haunted house” story sets new benchmarks for what audiences should expect from “mainstream” horror films. Director James Wan effectively utilizes ambiguity in relation to genre trappings to prime the audience for spookier scenes which are further accentuated by the film’s distinctive mystical and metaphysical stylizations. *Even now they give the film a distinctive texture and weight that helps Insidious* stand against the crowd.**
Rating	9.2/10
Grade	A

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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Grade, Review, review-movie, Year

Review: Saw

October 16, 2019 The Critic Leave a comment

I put off watching this movie for so long because of its branding as an awful torture porn series. Thankfully, at least in this first iteration of the Saw Franchise, Saw, the gore is never a huge issue. Instead, James Wan attempts to tell a psychological mystery story- an exploration into the morally ambiguous. The plot follows Lawrence (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell) as they find themselves trapped in a sick twisted death game – forced to figure out clues in a race against time.

The plot here is messy, but fun and thought provoking. There are red herrings. There are flashbacks within flashbacks. New twists and turns constantly appear. This in turn had me constantly asking why. Why were the characters in this situation? Who is Jigsaw and why was he doing what he was doing? As more information is revealed, my view and ideas on what was going on to and around the characters become more nuanced- almost like a jigsaw puzzle (wink wink). However, the constant information dump does feel messy at times.

I like how experimental the film is. The main villain, Jigsaw, teeters on the edge- not fully evil, but certainly not good. The juxtaposition between his selection process and stated purpose will have you asking if he’s morally ambiguous or just straight up a psychopath.

The scenes inside of the run down bathroom were shot great. Whenever the camera focused on Lawrence, it stayed steady- like his character. However, when it shifted to Adam, it rocked, highlighting his erratic nature. However, a lot of the action scenes were choppy and felt out of place. There were too many jumps and it felt like the whole piece would’ve been stronger without them.

Rating

TLDR: Saw, is an interesting journey that plays out a lot like a puzzle. The journey is disorienting at times, but watching Lawrence and Adam try and piece everything together is incredibly suspenseful and gripping.

Final Rating: 8.1/10. The movie is ambitious, in spite of its flaws. Anyone who likes a good mystery or wants a movie with a nuanced villain should check this out.

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