I’ve seen everything there is to see in the Conjuring universe. The movies were good but not great. Scary but not bone chilling. The structure most of them followed was all too basic: Perfect family moves into the creepiest house possible, wife starts noticing cabinets opening and the piano playing on its own, husband says it’s just her imagination, young child sees dead people then ultimately gets possessed, Ed and Lorraine Warren do an exorcism.
Obviously, this series of events can vary. The quality of dialogue and special effects can make or break the individual movie. But it’s still predictable. I think the director (Michael Chaves) realized the basic plot is getting tired and decided to make one more, and to make it different.
It opens with a young Lorraine touching a cursed mirror while pregnant and immediately going into labor. The baby, Judy, was stillborn but came back to life by prayer. Judy grew up– montage style– but always grappled with horrific visions of evil spirits.
Twenty years later, we’re in the 80s. The Smurl family of six (eight counting the grandparents who hardly spoke) purchased the mirror Lorraine foolishly touched twenty years ago as a gift for one of the four daughters. As you can imagine, some pretty hardcore haunting begins. Worst of all, is when the eldest daughter of the family starts choking up bits of mirror glass after they throw it out.
Soon-to-be-married Judy finds herself at the Smurl house because her visions brought her there. Ed and Lorraine followed after, and she convinced her parents to take a hiatus from retirement to be rid of the spirits. Lorraine decided that there were already three spirits who were already there, but the mirror is controlling them.
The spirits’ backstory is that a man found out his wild wife was having an affair and went bananas. He chased her and her mother with an axe and killed them. The three spirits were kind of random and not well explained. Lorraine said these three ghosts are nothing compared to the evil mirror. This whole backstory felt like an excuse to have a scary farmer guy chase everyone with said axe.
The mirror was back in the attic, fully intact after being previously destroyed. While Lorraine told Judy her whole life to ignore the horrific visions, this time the only option was to face them head on. The two stared into the mirror as it nearly crushed to death Judy’s fiancé, who I intentionally did not mention because he was so boring! Peace was restored, yay.
Conceptually, I appreciate the connection between Warrens and the Smurls with the mirror. The audience was able to follow the lives of both haunted families separately and see them come together. Usually it’s one family being haunted, and they go to a priest who visits the house only to get freaked out and call up Ed and Lorraine. This story felt more personal with them.
The jumpscares were clever. The camera once panned to the dad looking under the bed only for the ghost to be hanging on the bedpost when he sat back up. While the recurring mirror was symbolically cool, they made it almost sentient. It’s one thing for a spirit to possess the doll Annabelle because it has a face. Watching two grown men physically fighting a damn mirror was just silly.
I’m not disappointed because the bar hasn’t been high since the original Conjuring movie that I think most of us saw as middle schoolers. At this point, there are just so many problems that can only be solved by starting a new series from the ground up. It’s worth the watch anyway because what do I know?
Overall Rating: 5/10
