The Conjuring

There were two films out this week each ‘Based on a true story’ and each with an exorcism integral to the plot.

I have before railed against the ‘Based on a true story’ preface – a meaningless expression often given to a film to imbue it with a specious gravitas it might otherwise lack. I suspect that of the two films, the Romanian drama Beyond the Hills had more credence than the Hollywood horror The Conjuring.

With The Conjuring, we immediately seemed to be in familiar territory as the Perron family moved in to their new home – an old and isolated, rambling country house. Just for good measure, they were an all American happy family, save for the surly and truculent eldest teenage daughter, looking forward to a new start in their new home, just bought at auction, about whose history they knew nothing. What could possibly go wrong?

The conventional formula continued as initial strange noises and other slightly odd occurrences were quickly exposed as the normal vagaries of an old and draughty house. But then the tipping point was reached as this nuclear family discovered they were truly in a place of ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.

The Conjuring had its fair share of jump scares but even of these, several were telegraphed as imminent: when you see a guy backing into a house at night after investigating a weird going on outside and there is a window or open door behind him, you can be pretty sure  something is about to go off.

And sadly, apart from the jump scares there was little within the film to instill fear. The direction from James Wan was slack and there was a failure to build tension or suspense; the movie just ambled along.

There was unintentional light relief from the paranormal investigators, or demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren who were called in by the Perrons to help resolve their ghostly issues. The Warrens’ own family home contained a room of artefacts from their previous adventures, the premise for not having destroyed them being rather weak. When their daughter was yet again told that she must not enter the room, I was reminded of The Simpsons episode This Little Wiggy when Chief Wiggum asked of his son, Ralph, ‘What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?’ Needless to say, it wasn’t the last time she encroached into the room.

The film was not without merit; the performances were all adequate and it had a nice early 1970s feel of when it was set. It also didn’t rely on blood and gore in an attempt to shock.

Comparisons have been made with The Exorcist and Poltergeist and they have some similar elements – although the disturbing and enduring fear-inducement of The Exorcist is not one of them. For me, The Conjuring owed more to the classic 1940s Ealing portmanteau Dead of Night where the power of a ventriloquist’s doll and a game of hide and seek leads to the ghost of a child murdered in an earlier century both featured large in its composite story.

I was in a minority. There was a fair amount of shrieking and a palpable feeling of fear within the cinema at the time of my viewing; on the train home, the group of young men and women sat near me were clearly impressed as they related their scariest moments. And by definition, the whole raison d’etre of a horror film is to scare people regardless of whether it’s derivative or not. This one simply failed to scare me.

***

Beyond the Hills

The second film containing an exorcism ‘based on a true story’ this week is the slow-burning and languorous Romanian film Beyond the Hills.

Set predominantly in a monastery in a bleak and poverty-stricken district, it is a complex and multi-layered film revolving around two young women, Alina and Voichita. Previously childhood friends then lovers, their lives intertwine once more when Alina returns from working in Germany in an attempt to again enter into a relationship with Voichita who has since taken Holy Orders and is living the chaste and extremely frugal life of a nun. The rekindling of the relationship was always doomed and as Alina’s mental health deteriorates with the realisation that she will not achieve her objective, she provokes a series of events culminating in the belief by some that she is possessed and needs cleansing.

A Romanian film about faith, despair and unrequited lesbian love in an impoverished monastery was never likely to be an action-packed, sensationalist blockbuster. It is long at 155 minutes and its pace tends to alternate between dead slow and stop. It’s the sort of a film which will take over 5 minutes to show a nun leaving the kitchen to draw water from the well and return to the kitchen with no dialogue or plot advancement throughout that period. But it is a film that has the courage to take its time, confident that it can draw you into the lives of the people whose story it tells. And on the whole it succeeds.

There are no real villains or heroes in the film. It does not take the easy route to mock and blame religion for out-dated belief – when a nun believes she has been sent a sign from God and goes all peculiar, the Orthodox Priest in charge cuts down the hysteria curtly and tells her and the other nuns to move on. No, the people shown in this film, be they doctors, police or those of the cloth, are portrayed as well-meaning  individuals all looking to do no harm even if, like all of us, they can be judgemental and self-righteous on occasion.

Beyond the Hills is an unashamedly bleak and ultimately very sad film which gives no answers but merely records events leaving its audience to draw their own conclusions.

Cinematography was good, though the constant sound of the ever-blowing wind was sometimes crude and off-putting.

And there was an early failure of the sub-titles. When Alina first arrives at the monastery, the camera concentrates on a hand-written sign at its entrance. It’s clearly of some import for it to be shown so, but the audience is not let in on its message. Post-film research ascertained it stated, words to the effect: This is the House of God. Forbidden to those of different religion. You must believe and not doubt. It would have explained much.

3.5 stars.