The Conjuring (2013)

As promised, I have begun my trawl through the murky world of The Conjuring Universe, kicking off with the titular movie that started it all back in 2013.

Showcasing what it is claimed to be the most shocking case investigated by professional 'demonologists' Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), The Conjuring focuses primarily on a working class family, the Perrons, who invest all their money in a dream house in the country only to find they are sharing it with a malevolent demonic entity.

It's all very formulaic stuff (supernatural shit happens to family, family suffers, family calls in experts, supernatural shit escalates, experts drive it out at the last moment) that we've seen a million times before, from The Haunting to Poltergeist and beyond.

The set-up is little different to the many variations on the tired Amityville story and any number of other 'haunted house' tales that don't make bogus claims of being based on "real events".

That said, The Conjuring is very well made (and gets very LOUD during it climactic demonic confrontation), has charismatic leads in Wilson and Bates Motel's Farmiga, and is already laying the groundwork for a wider "universe" by the very nature of its main characters having a plentiful casebook of adventures to explore.

Being set in the '70s gives The Conjuring a nice period feel as well, and the roleplayers among us appreciate the Warrens methodical approach to their job, coming as it does straight out of the Call Of Cthulhu playbook.

But what really makes this an interesting movie is the sequence where the demonic force the Warrens are facing in the Perron's house uses a connection to Lorraine to 'activate' a totally unrelated entity back in the Warren's home - in their room of artefacts - the infamous Annabelle doll (whose story helps establish the Warren's bona fides at the start of The Conjuring).

In truth, this sub-plot has almost no bearing whatsoever on the main narrative, but provides a unique distraction the like of which I don't recall seeing in previous genre pieces of this ilk.

While the real Warrens were charlatans and con artists (or worst), the fictional Ed and Lorraine, because they exist in a cinematic universe where demons, ghosts, black magic etc are real, are true defenders of humanity worthy of joining the ranks of comic books' John Constantine and TV's Winchester brothers (from Supernatural).

I'd give The Conjuring a solid seven out of ten. It's not original by any stretch of the imagination, but it has some interesting moments, and by taking seriously the fantastical fabrications of the Warrens director James 'Aquaman' Wan and writers Chad Hayes and Carey W Hayes have tapped into a rich seam of stories and created an intriguing cinematic world that has the legs to expand beyond a single movie.

Deadwax (2018)

To celebrate the resumption of my Shudder subscription I wanted to remind all you horror fans out there about the streaming service's selection of rare grooves and highlight one of its finest exclusive tracks that I unearthed several years ago: Deadwax.

From Indiana Jones's quest to find the Ark of The Covenant in Raiders of The Lost Ark to Norman Reedus tracking down the sole print of La Fin Absolue du Monde in Cigarette Burns, I have always had a particular penchant for stories about the hunt for cursed artifacts, sources of forbidden knowledge. 

Treading similar ground to the Constantine episode The Devil's Vinyl, Deadwax is an eight-part Shudder serial about Etta Pryce (Hannah Gross), a professional "vinyl hunter", who is tasked by one of her rich clients to track down the only pressing of a legendary record, that is said to drive those who hear it insane... or worse.

Etta doesn't always operate 100 per cent within the law, and so turns to her 'mentor', gadget-builder Ian Ullman (Xena's Ted Raimi), who also has contacts within the vinyl collecting world that can help our heroine.

Initially parallel to the main story, then intertwined, we also meet a police forensics officer, Len Perry (Evan Gamble), who accidently hears part of the 'cursed record' while at the scene of bizarre murder.

The mummified husk of the victim has had all the moisture drained from its body, while apparently listening to this particular record on headphones.

Even just listening for a second, Perry is touched by the effects of the mysterious sounds on the recording and his life quickly spirals out of control.

As each episode is only about quarter of an hour long, I'm not sure why Deadwax wasn't edited into a single movie. Unless the creators were trying to emulate the tracks of an LP, in which case they missed a trick in not naming each chapter a "track" rather than a "part".

That said, the strongest of all the episodes, which is almost a stand-alone horror story in its own right, is Part Four, which is a flashback tale about college radio DJ, Tuck Weston (Chester Rushing), and his encounter with the fabled record the whole series revolves around.

This chapter not only delivers some incredible backstory material for the story, but also amps up the strangeness that undercuts everything in Deadwax.

At the quality end of low-budget, while there's some weak rear projection moments on some of the car journey scenes in Deadwax, necessity definitely proves to be the mother of invention for the more surreal and weird effects that really bring home the Lovecraftian horror later on.

I know I bang on about "Lovecraftian" horror a lot, but while the recent Empty Man played to the cosmic horror of this sub-genre, Deadwax leans way more into Lovecraft's fondness for the dangers of weird science, with this story echoing several of his original stories in its ideas.

Written and directed by Graham Reznick, whose CV includes extensive work as a sound designer for numerous films, the unnerving creepiness factor of Deadwax helps gloss over the few cracks in the narrative.

Rather than resorting to cheap jump scares, this is smart horror that relies heavily on its viewer actually projecting themselves into the story and accepting that this could be happening to them.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: That Time When I Went Blonde

Given what a startling transformation it was, it has always surprised me that there aren't more pictures of the time two of my friends at university bleached my hair for me.

Of course, smart phones weren't around in the late '90s, so, as far as I am aware, the only extant picture of my "blonde period" is this one that Paul found when riffling through his collection of old uni snaps.

Fellow Scriptwriting for Film & TV students Lou and Rosie had dyed my hair, at my request, and I rather liked it.

I also, as you might be able to tell from the blurry picture, had thicker hair back then; I don't think I could pull this look off now.

University is, of course, when you get up to this kind of shenanigans, even when you're a supposedly "mature" student in his late 20s.

A blurry close-up of my startling John Constantinesque hair-do