OK, so we’ll be skipping “Those Who Kill,” and watching Season Two of “Bates Motel” to see Vera Farmiga’s performance, which was the most entertaining thing about Season One. Seeing Kenny Johnson (who, as longtime super-fans of Shawn Ryan’s “The Shield, we’ll always remember as Curtis “Lemonhead” Lemansky, we’ll watch in anything*) as a new addition to the cast won’t hurt either, and there’s no possible way this can be as painful to sit through as the few episodes of the final season of Dexter that he played a federal agent in. We still worry about Bates Motel fucking up the mythology of Norman and Norma Bates, though. It wouldn’t have killed them to make it a period piece; so far nothing crucial to the plot or characters that required the show being set in the present. Norma still encounters plenty of sexist bullshit while trying to run a hotel while being female, so it wouldn’t be THAT big of a difference.
*Okay, my husband will watch Kenny Johnson in anything good, I’m the one who’ll watch him in anything because I’ve had a crush on him since 2006. Uh, have you seen that smile and those ARMS? Also, the last season and the last few episodes of Dexter were so bad that if I could go back and do it again, I’d just sit the whole thing out. It wasn’t worth the waste of my time no matter how sexy any guest star was. Make that the last two seasons. Sheesh.
A very valid question! Yeah, I think the birds would do it for me (if not before then). Take the quiz (but beware of MAJOR spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie yet – and if you haven’t, we highly recommend you do)! By the way, take some time to check out Renae Rude’s amazing blog, The Paranormalist — recommended, and often creepy, reading!
Nearly every haunted house movie begins the same way – a middle-class family invests every penny they have in an old fixer-upper. There is a married couple, a child (or children,) a cat and/or a dog. There is often (though not always) something a little dysfunctional or unusual about the family. Communication is these families is usually spotty at best. The husband and wife don’t confide in each other. The parents ignore unusual behavior by the kids or the animals, and don’t give credence to anything odd the kids say. The family is full of hope. It’s a brand-new, high-stakes, fresh-start for everyone.
Then bad things start to happen.
Ogre and I just got back from seeing The Conjuring. It’s a great movie in many ways, destined to become a horror classic.
But …
I could not help but ask myself the same question I always do when I see another…
(Insert some kind of “just hanging around to wait for the movie” joke of your own here; it’s probably funnier than any my sleep-deprived brain can think up).
Just a note here, it may not be the best idea to watch these after you get home from seeing the movie and you’re feeling tense and your nerves are jangled. I was feeling mellow when I made the mistake of watching…
1. ‘Vice’ and ‘The Conjuring‘ Present The 3:07 Project. Here’s the description: The devil’s hour, which takes place at 3:07 AM, is the most haunted time of the day. VICE and The Conjuring selected four directors to create short horror films inspired by that idea. Each one is distinctly twisted and scary.
Strap in for the final two– especially the final short “The Last Dive,” directed by Jason Eisener. I deeply regret watching that after dark. Jesus! My heart lurched in my chest, I felt it distinctly.
2. Read up some cool trivia, provided by yours truly, Horror Boom. The piece also has links to others, including the Warren’s Official Site and Museum of the Occult).
8. We have some video of On-set and BTS footage. You want honesty, I didn’t watch them because I strongly suspect they could by spoiler-ish. You can check them out now or wait till after the movie–as we will–to watch. Oh, and it’s HD. WARNING, POSSIBLE SPOILERS!
aaaaand part 2.(also HD). Looks like there may be some B-roll footage, so consider this a SPOILER ALERT!
9. You can try to figure out what the fu what the hell the story is behind this B-roll shot (that ends up in the movie):
Plus, there’s a ton of pieces here on Horror Boom you may have missed. Just type “conjuring” into the Search Box at the upper right hand corner and it’ll give you everything.
Couple reminders:
Don’t forget to bring your screaming voice, maybe some lozenges to soothe your throat with after the credits roll.
Either empty your bladder before the movie or wear Depends
If you have any spare Xanax lying around, you may want to bring one in the theater with you. Probably already in your tummy!
Starring Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ron Livingston
When Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga) agree to help a distraught family claiming their house to be infested with malevolent spirits, they are unaware that the case they are about to undertake will be the most challenging and distressing of their eventful, tumultuous careers as paranormal researchers. Similarly, when I as an audience member originally intending to see low-brow comedy This is the End changed my mind at the last minute and bought a ticket for The Conjuring, I had no idea just how much my heart was going to be very unimpressed; as it was made to work overtime for nearly the entire 112 minutes…
Having helmed the decade-defining Saw (2003), creepy and atmospheric Dead Silence (2007) and the often terrifying thrill-ride Insidious (2010), director James Wan has established himself as Australia’s premier Master…
Unless you’re as obsessed with The Conjuring as we are, we’re guessing there’s going to be at least a few of these that are news to you. Either way, these (and the links we give for more information) make for some interesting– and creepy– reading!
1. Lorraine Warren herself has a very brief cameo in The Conjuring – in one of the classroom scenes. You’ll need to keep an eye out to catch her, though.
3. Remember the ‘Lipstick-Faced Demon’ from James Wan‘s Insidious (2011) who scared the shit out of everybody (especially Barbara Hershey when we first saw him peeking out behind Wilson’s character)?
AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
That actor’s name is Joseph Bishara, and he plays Bathsheba in The Conjuring. Uh-oh.
4. You may have–OK, probably have– noticed via the film’s marketing campaign that there’s a doll in the movie so goddamned creepy that it makes the clown doll in Poltergeist look cuddly. The doll is based on another actual case the Warrens investigated.
Creepy-ass doll created for The Conjuring
5. The aforementioned creepy-ass doll that Wan based this sub-plot on was a Raggedy Anne doll named ‘Annabelle the doll’. James Wan decided rather than use a Raggedy Anne (Quote from Wan: I could not go to the company that makes Raggedy Anne and say, “Hey, can we portray your doll, you know, the product that you make as this thing that is a conduit to demonic spirits?”) he’d carefully design, craft, and build the creepiest doll he could find. Mission fucking accomplished. (See: Dead Silence if you doubt how sleep-with-the-lights-on scary Wan can make dolls and puppets) The Warren Occult Museum displays the original Annabelle doll (in a glass case— for the protection of visitors, not the doll), and you can read about the actual case here… especially if you’re feeling sleepy but need to stay awake.
The real deal.
6. Only one actual prop from the actual Warren’s Occult Museum (the museum was recreated by the production for scenes in the film), was used during filming. Ed Warren was an avid artist and painter, and James Wan says he saw one in the museum that “fit perfectly into our movie version of their haunted museum, and that’s what we have in there”. (Latino-review.com)
8. Andrea Perron (who was about 12 years old when shit got real in their new home)wrote a book about her family’s experience called House of Darkness, House of Light. You can see her reading an excerpt from in below. Also, she has her own You Tube channel.
9. During filming, star Lili Taylor (who also underwent a number of make-up preparations to represent her worsening stages of possession) actually blew her voice out from screaming so loudly and repeatedly… more than once. We assume she (and the sound editors) had a lot of work to get done in ADR. (source: Collider.com article here)
clap clap
10. Cast and crew reported, when asked in interviews, that they experienced strange events during filming, such as scratches appearing on Farmiga’s computer after signing on for the film (see below quote), people inexplicably waking up between 3 and 4 AM (“the devil’s hour’) and the real-life Carolyn Perron falling and breaking her hip while her family was visiting the set. (collider.com, same piece)
“We’d sent her the script back in December and she’s in New York. James [Wan] is in L.A. So she read it immediately. We got the call from her reps, who said she loved it and wanted to get on the phone with James, or Skype the next day. … She went to sleep. She came back in the morning to get on her computer to Skype him and there were three deep scratches on her computer screen. Completely inexplicable. Like, they weren’t there the night before when she read the screenplay on the computer, but they were there in the morning. And there was just no way to explain what it was but stuff like that has happened constantly.” –Producer Peter Safran
OK, not much write-up on this one because we have several more pieces to crank out on The Conjuring before it opens in less than 48 hours (and we’re already behind on that).
This featurette features never-before-seen interviews with the cast (as well as Lorraine Warren) … plus some more new footage from the film! Worth a look below:
Running at about three minutes, it’s definitely worth a look-see. Damn, the house looks ominous (at best) even in the daytime… more to come soon!
“[on Spirits]…everything is out there, and not all are our friends.” -Paul Eno, Paranormal researcher
You’ve probably heard that Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, is the day/night of the year when the veil between the spirit world and the human world in the thinnest. According to this new featurette for The Conjuring (opening Friday, July 19th), the hour that you have the most chance of making contact with the spirit world– or, the spirit world making contact with you–
Ahem…
–is not midnight (‘the witching hour’), but 3AM.
Watch the featurette below (also brought to us by VICE) and find out why. Warning: this is information you might will almost certainly regret learning if you wake up in the middle of the night and it happens to be around 3:00 AM*. Especially if something feels… off.
And yup, there’s new footage from the movie! We were at Horror Boom will have seen the movie less than 48 hours from now, and are actually trying to avoid too much new footage, since we don’t want any more jump scares ruined. Or maybe we do… at the time of this writing, it’s past 3AM …but still full dark out.
If you get easily freaked out, here is a cute, hopefully soothing screen cap from the featurette showing Ms. Warren’s pet cat (Lorraine is in the background, out of focus).
Since she’s very sensitive to the paranormal– hell*, she’s clairvoyant– maybe she doesn’t get that unsettling feeling many people do when your cat (or dog) suddenly stares intently at the wall–or worse yet, behind and above you– and you remember how often you’ve had mentioned to you that “cats can see things we can’t”. I don’t know about you, but daytime or early evening (still light out) one of the cats starts acting like it can sense something and acts strangely, we immediately think oh shit, earthquake, or other wrath of nature about to hit, then follow the cat around for a few minutes or longer until she shrugs it off and acts like herself again. But if any pet does the same thing after dark… we turn on the lights pretty fucking fast.
I know energy conservation started getting big in the early 70s, but screw it. In THIS house? Every light in the place after dark ON!
Remember to check local listings, there’s sneak previews Thursday night around here playing in at least 10 theaters (at 8:00PM and 10:15-ish, we notice) of The Conjuring in our area code alone. Shit, I think they even listed a couple theaters OUT of our area code–probably about a 2 hour drive– and some we didn’t even know existed, so look into it! If you’re lucky enough to see it early, remember not to get too excited and post spoilers when you’re talking about it. If you do ruin any part of the movie for someone who can’t see it yet, we’ll send the below creepy-ass doll after you!
You also might make “Bathsheba” angry, and you don’t want that, she’s scary enough just showing up, let alone when she’s mad at you…
*One of the few benefits of insomnia, I guess, is already being awake at 3:00 AM about ninety percent of the time.
**Sorry for the bad language, Ms. Warren. I actually felt slightly guilty using “hell” in the same sentence with her. No disrespect, ma’am.
We’ll go for it, but probably only if James Wan is heavily involved (well, I doubt they’ll hire someone like Uwe Boll or Michael Bay to REALLY fuck it up, but still, depends on if it’s someone we trust). Don’t miss the BRAND NEW trailer for The Conjuring at the end (though it has some featurette-like bits) with some fucking SCARY new footage (we’ll put it up very soon in a separate post, but if you cannot wait, it’s here too).
According to Variety, it looks like New Line is already eyeing a sequel to James Wan’s The Conjuring which should be a huge hit this weekend. New Line is currently exploring a potential franchise based around the Warrens’ investigations, which have involved cases that have already made their way to the big screen like The Amityville Horror and The Haunting in Connecticut.
Thanks, Patrick, for sharing such a great review. I’m pretty sure my husband (Mr. Horror Boom–though I’m the horror superfan in the family) ALSO wishes you lived up here in our area, since I’m going to have to pay for his ticket and STILL drag him to go see this with me (especially if there’s a Thursday night preview) like I did with, oh, Insidious, Sinister, Mama, and many others! Lili Taylor blew her voice out screaming? That’s not a huge surprise (poor woman). Uh-oh… my voice was pretty scratchy for 24 hours after seeing Mama in the theater. Oh, and I hear the cast are all wonderful, but that Vera Farmiga more or less steals the show acting-wise.
First of all, if you are a fan of this genre of film, YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE! You WILL see this movie! (Although… some of you may want to see an afternoon matinee so that when you leave the theater you can go to a park, watch the bunny rabbits play, and soak in the last hours of sunlight before you’re home checking rooms and corners.)
Okay, now that I have that out of my system, we can get to the review and the details. Last night I attended an advanced screening of the much anticipated film, The Conjuring, starring Patrick Wilson (Insidious, Evening), Vera Farmiga (A&E’s Bates Motel), Ron Livingston (The Odd Life of Timothy Green), and Lili Taylor (The Haunting, HBO’s Six Feet Under, and TV’s Hemlock Grove). The film is directed by James Wan (
The Conjuring opens Friday, July 19th – if you’re in a major city, there’s still several previews happening with ticket giveaways. Horror Boom will try to pass on all of them we hear about to you that we can! For now, however, you can feed your cravings with this…
“That was a terrible place. That was a very, very… very bad place.”
-Lorraine Warren, on the Perron house, from the below interview
Wow. OK, couple of things…
Whether you’re a skeptic or not, you have to admire this woman (who, by the way, is still going strong into her mid-80s; she had the energy to go to Wondercon 2013 as part of the panel for The Conjuring) for more than one reason. When I was doing research on the Warrens, I found–verified, actually– that neither Edward nor Lorraine Warren ever took any kind of payment for their services. Even when both of them were interviewed (before Mr. Warren passed in 2006) by several skeptical (very skeptical) societies, all of the interviewers seemed to come away with the same conclusion, a universal variation of Well, if they’re lying, they don’t know it. They believe.
Of course, the possibility also exists that neither the Warrens nor the Perron family (who did not immediately* cash in with book or movie deals like some of the Warren’s most notorious clients; for example, the Lutz family of Amityville) are making any details of the Harrisville Hauntings up…
Hey, so, is there an alternate entrance to the museum we could use?
Whether you’re skeptical or not, one thing is sure – The Conjuring is the most accurate portrayal of Ed and Lorraine Warren ever put on film to date.**
Pretty sure I’ll be covering my ears, scrunched down in my theater seat when this scene in the movie comes up (if I’m not in that position BEFORE then, that is)
Oh, and another thing is certain– that based on a true story or not, The Conjuring is pure nightmare material.
“So Lorraine, you picking up any kind of vibes yet from this place?”
*Actually, the Perron family (and the Warrens) kept things more or less to themselves for thirty years or so.
**Vera Farmiga (who wanted to make her portrayal as accurate as possible), James Wan, and especially the writers spent as much time with Ms. Warren as they could. An amazing (and spoiler-y) interview with both the writers, Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes will be linked to soon; watch this space!
HORROR BOOM 