My thoughts on “The Conjuring” on the big screen:
First, it’s a great movie if you believe in the paranormal, in the possibility of evil. It has some well-timed scares and startles and has an interesting storyline. Supposed to be based on a true story. It’s fun if you like a good scare.
Second item of note: the characters violate all the rules of scary noises in the night. If you hear a thump in the night that startles you awake…and then you hear another thump…don’t go investigate! What the hell is wrong with you? Pull the blankets up over your head as a protective shield against all bogeymen and wait for dawn! If something grabs your foot in your bed, do not check it out! Put your feet back in the blankets, wrap up, wait for dawn. Feel a cold breath on your face in the night? Again, do not turn on the light, do not get up, do not pass go: blanket as a shield, people! BLANKET AS A SHIELD!
Third thought inspired by the film: if you buy a creepy old house and find a secret boarded up space under the stairs, leave the mofo boarded up. Howzabout we not open any haunted portals to other dimensions?! When I find myself house hunting again someday, I will triple check for zero creepy factor as well as for haunted cellars, possessed attics, mysterious boarded up rooms, blood stains on the floors and walls and for lynching trees where the ghosts of the hanged lurk…only once I’m sure that that a potential home is free of creepyosity and haunts will I sign on the dotted line and move in. I will not move in sight unseen. I will not marvel at the wonder of abandoned personal property left by previous owners because IT’S HAUNTED, DUH! Even a house that seems perfectly normal will be scratched off my list of potential home ownership if it has those scary Amityville Horror windows upstairs…no freakin’ way. My imagination is far too overactive to move into anything even vaguely resembling Amityville, Camp Crystal Lake or Dracula’s castle.