Even though The Conjuring is replete with horror film tropes that include the ominously barking dog, the inexplicably cold house, strange odors of rancid meat, clock stoppages, the appearance of strange bruises, and sleepwalking, it is, in a number of ways, the anti-horror film. From the very beginning, the unusual is anything but, and the supernatural is more akin to the natural world than it is a residence of the world of the impossible. As the film begins, we are privy to Ed and Lorraine Warren (whose names might be familiar to anyone who has read The Amityville Horror and seen the subsequent celluloid incarnations of the haunting, questionable tale) interviewing two young women who have recently been annoyed by a mischievous doll.
However, the oddity here is not the doll with a penchant for writing notes and freaking out its default landlords. Rather, the girls seem fine with the spirit of Anabel Higgins inhabiting the body of the doll. In fact, they “gave her permission to move into the doll.” Unlike many specter-based films, the characters here are fully accepting of the unusual and the abnormal; they are only bothered when Anabel begins to communicate with the directly – as opposed to communicating via a medium.
The doll doesn’t speak directly, but there are recurrences of crumpled pieces of paper, on which “Miss me?” is written in crayon and scrawled in a child’s hand. As if something straight out of Lacan, the doll is only a nuisance when it becomes “real” through language. In this moment of direct communication, it becomes less imaginary and more of a symbol of identity and autonomy.
The same can be seen in the elevating tension in the household of Roger and Carolyn Perron and their five young daughters. The rancid meat smell, the continuously cold house, and the eerily stopped clocks are nuisances until the primary specter speaks and tells one of the young daughters that “she wants us to leave the house.” Admittedly, this would be strange, but language is what creates a reality in the improbable. Most everything else – some how – can be rationalized, it seems.
That said, The Conjuring succeeds on a number of other levels as well. For starters, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren add clout to the characters. They are both accomplished actors and they avoid falling into the melodramatic roles often assigned to the recent rash of horror films. In the same vain, James Wan plays with our expectations of the horror genre, something mostly antithetical to the gornography most recently associated with the horror / suspense genre. Moments that could be categorized as shock value don’t proceed as far as they could – for the better. The gore that could gush forth in other films in not present here.
And, in addition to a more effective style, there is a thematic reason for this lack of blood, guts, and gore. There’s something eerie in the connection between “possession” – the demonic form – and “possessions” – those that drive commerce and create an image of affluence and status. Anabel, the first doll we meet, is a perfect abode for the “inhuman spirit” until the possession becomes the aggressor, flipping the ownership instituted by the two young girls. At this point, the doll must be eliminated. And, like many other items, the doll ends up in the Warrens’ basement, a gigantic safe-deposit box of souvenirs from the demonic expulsions and ghost-busting adventures. Appropriately enough, this door remains locked. Each item is a possessed possession kept under lock and key, safely possessed by those hunting the possessed.
A similar connection is illustrated by the Peron’s, whose “everything is tied up in this house,” a new purchase that prevents them from simply running away. In tandem, the house is formerly owned by an accused witch, Bathsheba, whose husband discovers her sacrificing her young child in an act of defiance against God. Subsequent to her husband’s discovery, Bathsheba climbs a tree on their property, proclaims her love for Satan, condemns all those that would try to take her land, and commits suicide.
Eventually, all of her land is divided, and an epidemic of suicides takes place throughout the houses occupying this land.
The crux here is ownership, something that Bathsheba was unfamiliar with, inasmuch as her husband would be the legal owner of their property. Killing her child was one of only two acts of agency that she had over something that she possessed – she grew it, she bore it, it was hers. The other act was over her own life. And, as her edict was quickly defied, she discovers much more agency and power in death than she did in life, and much of this agency is provided by the items perpetually left in the house, namely the junk in the cellar and a large cabinet in an upstairs bedroom.
All in all, it’s fair to assume that The Conjuring is a ghost story about the malevolence of the value we place on items, ownership, and possessions. The Warrens, who have a young daughter, collect items to document their endeavors, but they fear their daughter’s interactions with them. In this, they create a delicate, dangerous balance between worth and family.
