Film Review

David Begelman 

“The Conjuring:” the mostly ghostly of Rhode Island

 

       It looks as though James Wan’s 2013 horror flick about a family’s haunting has all

 

the makings of a handsome showing at the box office. It’s already taken in $41.5

 

million its first weekend, and if critics and producers play their cards right, there’s no

 

telling how richly rewarded the effort will be. Of course, you’ve got to ensure the

 

movie capitalizes on its initial promise; so getting all the production ducks in a row

 

from the outset should be a primary order of business.

First, the publicists emphasize the fact that the movie is based upon “a true story.” The Perron family of husband (played by Ron Livingston), wife (played by Lili Taylor) and five young girls reported a haunting they experienced in their home during the 1970s. And to add a touch of verisimilitude, scriptwriters Chad and Carey Hayes front-loaded their tale with a family dog that refuses to enter the spooky house from the beginning. (The conceit is an expectable one for many horror flicks, but implausible anyhow, as though when it came to ghosts, canine sensory receptors had to be on a par with canaries sensing coal mine gas leakages.)

As for the “true story” spin, the oldest of the girls, Andrea Perron, later published a trilogy about the haunting. She has informed us the film is partial truth and fiction, while her friend Norma Sutcliffe, who subsequently purchased the farmhouse, has a different tale to tell about her own experiences in the homestead. Hers is a watered down version of being spooked, involving minor disturbances rather than terrifying events, like the full-blown possession suffered by Carolyn Perron. (In the role, Lili Taylor has her bona fides through another portrayal: in Jan de Bont’s 1999 inferior remake of the impressive Robert Wise 1963 “The Haunting.”)

Then you’ve got to recruit the irrepressible team of ghostbusters, Ed and Lorraine Warren (portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) who actually consulted on the case—after showing up unannounced. That decision may have been on shaky ground. The couple has less than a stellar record at rooting out evil, as their take on the Amityville Horror case would seem to indicate. This escapade drew a rep in some forensic quarters as a gigantic hoax, while Ed Warren, seemingly eager to put his foot in his mouth whenever he opened it, characterized himself as a “certified demonologist.” Now deceased, this ghostbuster was a devout Catholic, although not a priest, leaving us to wonder under what auspices his alleged “certification” was conferred. Maybe the mantle was apt for an investigator who fancied he could always tell the difference between a poltergeist and a demon. But how he managed this zany feat must itself be reckoned a divine mystery.

In the film, Ed Warren undertakes the exorcism of Carolyn Perron, conducting a maverick ritual that would be scorned by Catholic prelates as contrary to church-authorized procedures for initiating the rite. And official permission for the procedure is obtained through the local bishopric, not the Vatican, as Ed’s character maintains.

Among the real Ed Warren’s notable gaffes—one among many—was his insistence that the Book of Shadows called the Necronomicon was a medieval grimoire of spells and incantations. He warned visitors to his museum of ghostly relics in the basement of his home in Monroe, Connecticut, not to read it lest he or she come under its diabolical influence. Yet the so-called Book of Shadows is of mid-20^th Century vintage, an invention of Gerald Gardner, one of the pioneers of the Wiccan movement of modern witchcraft. The cult is one of nature worship founded upon the dubious premise that “witches” were actually a maligned early modern culture of nature-worshippers and healers. The Necronomicon, with an utterly different provenance, was also a product of 20^th Century fiction. It was the brainchild of the writer H. P. Lovecraft, who in his own words revealed: “Now about the ‘terrible and forbidden books’ — I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself. Robert Bloch devised the idea of Ludvig Prinn and his De Vermis Mysteriis, while the Book of Eibon is an invention of Clark Ashton Smith's. Robert E. Howard is responsible for Friedrich von Junzt and his Unaussprechlichen Kulten.... As for seriously-written books on dark, occult, and supernatural themes — in all truth they don’t amount to much. That is why it’s more fun to invent mythical works like the Necronomicon and Book of Eibon.”

That’s not all the Warrens are clueless about. The pair was evidently ignorant about the actual history of paranormal phenomena, including the spate of “possessions” the Church had investigated for centuries, pronouncing many of which to be pseudo-possessions. This was precisely the reason why theological criteria for true possessions, after continual revisions, needed to meet a test of stringency.

Demon possession also has historical links to witchcraft, the theological tall-tale about women amounting to science fiction about the gender. “The Conjuring” picks up this ball and runs with it avidly. The malign presence in the home is the spirit “Bathsheba,” a horrific entity. A witch while she was alive, she reportedly murdered a girl by driving a needle through the base of her skull, an unoriginal spin on the hoary rumor about midwives during the early modern period. She also has the hots for Carolyn’s husband, considering his wife a competitor. And if you’re wondering when a Hollywood film inevitably gets to sex, here we go—except in the form of a randy apparition. After all, the five children are much too young for the pastime, the parents are too scared, and the last thing you’d expect from the Warrens is lascivious carriage. So the ghost can be considered a case of horniness by default.

Bathsheba, real or not, also has an appetite for anachronism. While mention is made in the film of her connection to Salem witchcraft, her time, in the memorable words of Hamlet, is out of joint. Infanticide was a rumored feature of European witchcraft, not the American version of the practice. The latter specialized in such blights as crop failure, low cow yield, birth defects and spectral visitations. And Bathsheba died in 1885, several centuries after infanticide and cannibalism were circulated as standard witch practice, as reported in treatises like the fifteenth century Malleus Maleficarum.

There’s no denying “The Conjuring” is a scary film. But what else can we expect from

 

creepy basements, loud noises and gruesome surprises galore? And don’t imagine we

 

haven’t noticed some pilfering from previous films: a head twisting doll, vomiting and

 

a levitating bed reminiscent of “The Exorcist,” an attack of crows, like Alfred

 

Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” a door banged on ferociously, like “The Haunting” and, of

 

course, a dog about to have a nervous breakdown before other characters even get the

 

willies.