Conjuring : Les dossiers Warren

« Regardez comme je peux encore vous surprendre avec ce que vous avez déjà vu mille fois ! », s’est dit le talentueux James Wan. Superbe travail de réalisation, surtout en ce qui concerne les longs plans d'ouverture. Belle ambiance des années 70, laquelle convient parfaitement aux maisons hantées. Des acteurs de qualité, un beau jeu avec le son. C’est un film de genre de niveau A dont Warner peut être fier. Malgré tout, la fin aurait pu nous offrir davantage. Il faut dire que le premier [REC] a mis la barre sacrément haut pour le build-up final ! (16/09/2013)

James Wan ne manque pas de talents en tant que réalisateur de films d'horreur, mais étant donné que j’ai vu Insidious 2 récemment, Conjuring : Les dossiers Warren m’a semblé quelque peu redondant. Et le fait que ce soit basé sur des faits réels m’a glacé les sangs. Brrr, mieux vaut oublier ça rapidement ! (26/01/2014)

James Wan is a god. And if filmmakers can’t be gods, then he’s at least a demigod or something like Hercules. Because while I’m not sure where he even came from, I must say that if he sticks to the horror genre, he might become one of the best contemporary horror movie directors. I haven’t ever seen such a great and at the same time horrible – in the good sense – movie. At first glance, The Conjuring seems like a classic supernatural movie. The story has an old house, ghosts, poltergeists, a swamp, an old tree that’s moldering away and an exorcism – so nothing out of the ordinary. But this movie can be surprising. It can surprise you with its atmosphere before and after the movie itself. Before I watched the movie, I only knew that it’s based on real-life events and that the people in trailers were the ones who suffered through those traumas. I also knew that it’s all based on the most truthful truths that you could ever get in a movie and that we could ever manage to swallow down. But after I watched it, I learned about the most famous ghost hunter in the US and I started hunting down more and more information that assured me that this movie isn’t any ordinary movie. Because James Wan shot the absolutely perfect horror. I haven’t seen a horror this good in a long time. And I also haven’t seen a character that the actress could embody this perfectly. Vera Farmiga is absolutely amazing in this! This is exactly the kind of movies that the viewer needs. A healthy dose of the supernatural is always nice. It assures us that there are things in this world that simply can’t be explained. (17/11/2013)

For the time being, unenthusiastic satisfaction, Wan’s reputation and the unusual positive responses may have set the expectations too high. The Conjuring is a very good old-school horror movie that takes inspiration from all sorts of places. With twisted elements and clichés Wan mixes a very tasty atmospheric cocktail. I don’t mind the lack of originality in horror, quite the contrary in fact, I’m glad that there are competent filmmakers who aren’t afraid of making polished classical genre movies (even if schematically). What bothers me a little is when those clichés are not used in an inventive way. The Conjuring is a safe bet. Does it work? Yeah, it sure does. Insidious, Wan’s previous film, worked a bit better (at least for me), because the initial unoriginal premise was spiced up with something (who could have guessed that there would be something like “astral travel”? Nobody. Who can guess that The Conjuring will result in an exorcism? pretty much everyone half an hour in, at most), and it also had smarter and more original jump-scares (remember the guy walking by the window?). In Insidious that resulted in terror that was intensive and crawled under your skin, whereas here, for most of the time, we move within the boundaries of pleasant fear. And then there is that weird subplot with the Annabelle doll, which I think was unused as well as incomplete. But although I can’t avoid such criticism, I think The Conjuring is very well made and a must-see, and I’m sure it will be among my top horror movies of the year. In any case, I’m looking forward to what it will do in a future private viewing, with my face close to the screen and the sound through the headphones. Maybe after that it could get the fifth star. (29/07/2013)

I-I-I w-w-was sh-sh-shaking with f-f-fear; not. Tension without fear with ineffective fright moments. Which wouldn’t matter if the movie weren’t all about frights and fear. Although, in the first half, Wan builds up and further tightens the tension in textbook style (basing this all on genre classics), nothing comes of it. Although, perhaps... An over-combined finale which tries to cover so much that it covers nothing fully. P.S.: Squealing Valena was priceless! (01/08/2013)