Conjure the Dummy!

We continue our Halloween fun this week with two very different movies.  One is a brand-new release and another is a flick from the ‘70s.  They’re definitely worlds apart…in every sense.  (By the way, I've been told the font is kind of small on here, so I've up the size.  You're welcome.)

Movie #1:  The Conjuring (2013, with Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Lili Taylor)

See!!  "Tim Burton Death Tree"!!!

Jason and Kathy both saw this in the theater; I missed it.  As it released on iTunes this week, we decided to scrap one movie we’d already decided on and watch this instead.  I’m so glad we did.  This is the story of an evil witch, a centuries-old farmhouse, the typical American family, and a couple of demonologists.  Everyone’s heard of Ed and Lorraine Warren—famous paranormal investigators who have had a very public and fairly controversial career.  This is one of their cases.  This is a ghost story. This is a haunted house story.  This is also a story about demonic possession.  Think—Amityville Horror with more kids and switch out the crazed dad for the mother.  It starts out as innocently as these things always do… clocks all stopping at the same time, things going bump in the night, unexplained bruises you don’t remember getting, shadows you may or may not have seen.  Then, it escalates rather quickly—and violently.  Here enters Ed and Lorraine.  The mystery of this odd house is uncovered, the power of faith is called upon, and good battles evil.  It follows the “formula” for these types of movies, and overall it’s fairly well done.

What we liked:  1. That they showed the pictures of the actual Perron family and the Warrens during the credits, along with newspaper clippings about the case and others investigated by the Warrens.  2.  Although Ed died in 2006, Lorraine Warren, now 86, was a consultant on the movie.  3.  Setting—the movie did a great job with the old farmhouse and the grounds around it.  Very creepy.

Ratings:  Jason—3.5; Kathy—4; Me—4.  (Now, Kathy and I are really into ghost stories and hauntings for our horror movies.  Jason’s more of the slice and dice crowd, and he did say that influenced his score just a bit.)

Moral of the story:  When you are out buying a house people…do NOT pick the house that is several hundred years old and has been abandoned for over 40 years because all the owners suffered mysterious breakdowns and/or death.  Also—do NOT pick the house that is worth a lot but is actually within your puny budget and sucks up your life savings.  Also—do NOT pick the house that has the creepy, black, “Tim Burton death tree” in the yard!  You just KNOW something evil went down there!  Friends… how many times do we have to tell you.  Learn from these cheesy movies!  DON’T BUY THE HOUSE.

Movie #2:  Magic (1978, with Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith)

A young, fairly handsome Anthony Hopkins.  Beautiful Ann-Margret.  This movie should prove good, right?  Wrong.  Oh lord.  This movie was the most painfully slow and tedious descent into madness one could watch.  The premise itself isn’t bad… and it wasn’t because the acting sucked.  I mean, come on!  Anthony Hopkins!  The acting/casting was really good.  We actually felt sorry for the cast in the end.  It’s just the pacing of this movie was slower than pouring frozen molasses into a freezer while standing on the frozen tundra of the Arctic.  No lie, people.  It took FOR—EV—ER.   The plot points were spaced so far apart, and the pacing was so slow that you could feel the moments of your life drifting away into the ether as you sat through this just WAITING for something to finally happen!  You wanna know the story?  Okay—here’s my one-sentence synopsis:  Fearful, socially awkward ventriloquist runs away from success to a Catskills cabin, hooks up briefly with his high-school crush, kills his agent, his lover’s husband, and then himself because he is driven to madness by his wooden dummy.  He’s completely insane and believes his dummy talks to him and through him… as if he were real.  (Read here—“I’m a REAL boy!”)  Kathy thinks what might have slightly redeemed this movie is if Fats (the dummy) actually came to life in the end—kinda like Chucky in Child’s Play.  Me—If Anthony Hopkins can’t save a movie, then it just can’t be saved.  ‘Nuff said.

What we liked:  1. The packs of Smarties I ate out of Jason’s bowl of Halloween candy.  I can’t speak for the others…  Man, this was just bad.

Ratings:  Jason—2.5; Kathy—2.5; Me—2.  **Please note—this movie was going to get scores equal to The Swarm (our absolute worst movie to date).  However, we couldn’t do that to the actors, simply because they did do a great job with what they had.  So we bumped up the scores half a star simply on the effort of the actors.