The SHALLOWeen Series: The Conjuring

This Halloween season, I'm presenting a new feature: The SHALLOWeen series! I'll share a  series of very shallow assessments of all the movies (and the one music video) that have ever scared me. Get ready... I'm a true 'fraidy cat. 

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THE CONJURING is bad news, man.  I mean, seriously, it is tough to watch this thing all the way through without covering your eyes... I'm just speaking from personal experience.

Full disclosure, the first time I saw this movie a few years ago was in the middle of the day at work. The job I had at the time allowed me to have some downtime, so I pulled it up on Netflix on my computer, using an ultra-MINIMIZED window that I partially (and purposefully) blocked with a spreadsheet.  Not to hide it from any passersby, mind you, but to SHIELD MYSELF FROM THE UNENDING SENSE OF DREAD AND TERROR THAT THIS MOVIE WAS BOUND TO INFLICT. Boy, was I right.

The movie starts off with a detailed flashback introducing a haunted demon doll named Annabelle. 

And this is where I sign off, ladies and gentlemen. 

Just kidding.  There's SO MUCH MORE.

The action moves on to a haunted house where Coach Taylor and his wife Lily live with their 17 daughters. Or 5 daughters, I don't know, it was hard to count them with the screen minimized so much. 

Ghosts are haunting their old-ass farmhouse, but they keep going into the basement and playing this Marco-Polo style clapping game in the dark while blindfolded and then waking up in the middle of the night and investigating strange noises and I just can't with this, you guys.

Take my word for it, it's scary. 

Then the Warrens show up -- they're played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, and they are great.  Turns out, there's some kind of ghost witch doing all this, but moving into another house won't solve the problem, so they have to fight the spirit where they are. 

Everything starts to get crazy after that, and I loved it, but I was terrified the entire time. What can I say?  It is an excellent horror movie. 

Major take-away: Minimizing streaming windows and partially blocking them with spreadsheets doesn't do shit.