Then Michael Chaves was announced as the director and I feared this film wouldn't be as good since his last horror film was The Curse of La Llorona and although I like that film, it relies too much on jump scares than atmosphere.
But now that I've seen the film, I'm so pleased to say I really enjoyed it. So before I go on, I'm gonna change things up a bit. I'm going to talk about my negatives first, then my positives and then an element that I was mixed over regarding the film.
So for negatives, I only have three. Easily first is the name of the film. I hate the title. It sounds like a really bad punchline to an even worse joke and I want to know who came up with that name.
Second, you can feel James Wans absence during this film. From the execution of scares to the imagery, it has a very different feeling to it. And when the previous films had entities that were creepy, this film has entities that feel generic and a couple were very gross and unintentionally funny to look at.
Finally the main villain of the film is extremely forgettable, bland and boring and I never felt interested in it whereas the previous films had villains who were memorable, scary to look at and interesting.
Now that's the negatives out of the way, let's talk about the positives. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are the heart and soul of this film. Their portrayals of Ed and Lorraine Warren is so captivating and beautiful to watch. It doesn't feel like we're watching movie characters. It feels like we're watching real people tell their life story in these films.
Along the same line, this film has the most heart of the entire franchise because as well as Ed and Lorraine Warren, there are other characters who are actually really good and really likable due to the amount of heart they express.
Something else I was really impressed with was the story. This film goes for a more investigation story and tone and it seriously works. I felt invested, interested and was even trying to it work out at times and that is what an investigation film is supposed to do.
Michael Chaves also does a much better job than his last horror venture. I still would have preferred James Wan to return but I would prefer this film over La Llorona. He sets up the scares of the films very very well.
This film uses its budget very well because some of the set designs looks so real. That's always impressed me how we're probably looking at film sets yet it feels like we're looking at real locations.
And finally Joseph Barbaras score is once again so eerie and very underrated. No one ever talks about how good the score to the Conjuring films are.
Now I want to talk about a segment of this film that I feel will be divisive and also how I really felt about this film. I left the cinema feeling disappointed but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. I really enjoyed it, I am giving this a positive review but this film is not scary at all and that is what was disappointing about it.
Yes a horror film doesn't have to be scary to be good. There's a lot of people who don't get scared by horror films but can still enjoy them. But what made The Conjuring my favourite horror film of all? Because it was my scariest cinema experience. Why do I love the The Conjuring 2? Because I found it scary. This film didn't scare me at all and I was really disappointed by that.
However whilst I would say this is certainly the weakest of the three films, this is still a very solid and very good film that I would recommend.
⭐⭐⭐
No comments:
Post a Comment