Ugh! Why did I pay $19.99 to rent this movie? What a waste of time! I keep hoping that "The Conjuring" movies will get better, but they don't. It's always more of the same: a formulaic story structure, a ridiculous villain, a forced love story and bad computer-generated imagery. (CGI is getting worse, IMHO). I should’ve given up on these movies being any good by this point, especially after watching the "Annabelle: Creation" and "Annabelle: Comes Home" films. (I thought those movies were silly in the extreme, but to each his own.)
But back to discussing this recent Conjuring film: I feel like horror movies these days are just horror parody films. The whole 'the devil made me do it' just fell flat for me. Plus, this film breaks a major writing rule: ‘Your main characters must be likable, and they MUST make decisions that you can respect.’ I can't tell you how many times Lorraine and Ed Warren's characters are separated from each other and ended up taking risks that are dangerous. (Hmm, I doubt that the real people that the movie is based on behaved this recklessly.) I mean, it's pretty embarrassing how these two characters are portrayed, such as bumbling around in dark crawl spaces, staring frozen at things and beclowning themselves to convince us of their fear. And don't even get me started on Ed Warren's character wielding a sledgehammer. Was this a throwback to the Looney Tunes cartoons? Was the character who played Father Kastner supposed to be a parody of Elmer J. Fudd? (At this point, I'm being facetious.) Oh and if any of you think that I'm being too hard on this movie, let me remind you that I paid $19.99 for early access to this cinematic dreck.
***Take my advice: wait until this movie is free to watch or until it’s only $2.99 to rent. Don’t make the same mistake as me. If I could go back in time I would stop myself from renting this for a whopping $19.99.***