The Conjuring (2013)

Shot with a marvelous 1970s vibe down to the opening credit crawl, “The Conjuring” takes the old “based on a true story” tag used by so lame horror movies and makes it something to scream about again. CGI? None that I saw. Plot: The Perrons (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor are the parents) move into a massive farm house. An old, hidden basement is found. Clocks stop. The dog dies. One girl sleep walks. Another is pulled from bed. Handclaps are heard. The instances then turn shocking until mother calls in Christian paranormal investigators (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). The woman can “see” ghosts, and the house is full of them. I’ll stop. Watch. Director James Wan works his film effortlessly, opening on a seemingly unrelated tale of doll. Are they unrelated? Music, editing, the giving of information, all are top notch, and climax is relentlessly tense. I have finally seen a film that can stand near “Exorcist.” I can’t get past one line where Farmiga says the ghost had not yet been violent. Did the actress misspeak? (Ignore that.) This is a nightmare inducer, the kind I’d sneak watch as a teen, sound low. I loved those moments. A- 

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

With “Paranormal Activity 4” topping the box office this weekend, I realize I only ever saw the first film, and bypassed a crop of sequels. Until now. “Paranormal Activity 2” may have been titled “Paranormal Activity Too” as it follows the sister (Sprague Grayden) of the woman (Katie Featherston) haunted and left fate unknown in the low-budget, hand-made 2009 box office smash. This is a prequel, stand-aside, and carbon copy, with the same found home surveillance and video camera “evidence” footage showing a mysterious force ripping apart a family. Cue slamming doors, bizarre attacks, and -- one hour in -- a frying pan falling off one of those pot hanger thingies in a kitchen I envy.  “PA1” was a surprise film made by a guy who wanted to scare the crap out of folks, and he made it in his own home. “PA2” has moments –- floating baby does provide spooks galore -– but it’s studio product made to make coin, and that’s very normal activity. The entire film builds up and previews “PA3.” Should I see that? B-

The Woman in Black (2012)

Voldermort would shit his robe. In “The Woman in Black,” Harry Potter himself Daniel Radcliffe is an early 1900s widowed father/ greenish solicitor sent on a miserable errand: Close out the estate of an old woman who left behind a decrepit English mansion and “Hoarders”-worthy piles of papers. How very Jonathan Harker. Eel Marsh House (!) is built on high land regularly made an island during high-tide, set apart from a town where our hero learns much quickly: He is not welcomed, every parent has lost a child, and the manor is full of vile noises and visions. This is an old–school haunted-house yarn, based not on a book written by Poe, but one certainly written with the old master in mind. Radcliffe does well playing a young man raised to believe in God, but not ghosts, and stricken to see much of the latter, but never the former. Director James Watkins has washed out almost all color and light, so any bright signs must not be trusted. The house moans, shadows creep, and ghostly faces appear out of thin air, making the audience jump and scream, and then laugh. A-

House (1986)

“House” is a cheap horror movie with its tongue firmly planted in cheek, sure to scare a child but keep an adult laughing. William Katt, he of “The Greatest American Hero,” is a Stephen King-like novelist hell bent on writing his Vietnam memoirs. For some solitude, he chooses the house of his late aunt’s, also the home where he grew up, and years later saw his own young child disappear. Nothing will go well, and I just don’t mean the seemingly unemployed neighbor played by George Wendt, he of “Cheers.” Goblins and a massive grasshopper thingy with sharp teeth appear, the medicine cabinet isn’t a medicine cabinet, and Richard Moll – he of “Night Court” – is a dead and angry war pal returned. “House” is a dumb guilty pleasure, a nostalgic trip for those of us raised on 1980s TV and pre-CGI flicks where we jumped at the first sign of a guy in a rubber suit with claws. B

Insidious (2011)

American-made horror flicks, especially ones rated PG-13, are a dime-a-dozen and pointless as alcohol-free beer. The urge to shock and cut a swath through the audience is undone by the need to ensure 12-year-olds can get in. “Insidious” is an exception. Dig it: Ghosts and ghouls rule your new dream house, but it isn’t the home that’s haunted. It’s your child. Spooky. That’s the premise that drives our parent heroes (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) to tumble desperate into the arms of some ghost busters straight out of “Poltergeist.” Dig it further: Imagine, guys, coming home to see our wife talking to your own mother … and a priest. (I’d shit myself.) As with “Poltergeist,” what we don’t see is the real shocker, not blasé gore. The rating lulled me in, and the film whacked me on the head, “Sixth Sense” style. Too many scenes at the end are dark to the point of murky (and baffling) confusion, and the villain is murkier, but “Insidious” had me up at 3 a.m., listening for spooked baby monitors we do not own. B