This week marks the release of The Conjuring which is already garnering rave reviews from critics and seems to be on it’s way to a decent opening weekend at the box office. But what sticks out the most about The Conjuring is that it’s a horror film that doesn’t rely on or try to re-invent tropes of the genre but rather embraces them — which is a concept we all forgot worked.

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It’s not often these days that we are gifted with a decent horror film, despite the sheer number of them that are released each year. Usually we get a burst of movies around Halloween but The Conjuring is not some gimmick movie trying to earn money off of a holiday, instead it’s an actual film that is actually pretty haunting.

Imagine that — a movie that is actually trying to be both a horror film and a good film.

I liken The Conjuring to Scream in that they live within the world of horror already created. Neither film tried to reinvent the genre but both still somehow succeed in bringing something new to the table. Scream was half parody, half horror as it never once pretended that horror films didn’t exist before it, which was something you pretty much hadn’t seen before.

Scream went as far as to openly mock trope as Wes Craven famously propped up and pointed out every horror genre cliche in one classic party scene before then tearing down each one in brilliant fashion.

The Conjuring is absent that mocking tone, but it is still a throwback horror film we rarely see these days. Most of the time, ‘throwback’ is confused with reboot, remake or sequel but The Conjuring is trying to pay homage to old school horror movies while still attempting to be modern.

Unlike the constant flow of horror sewage we are subject to each year where the story is more about how much blood and guts can be spilled than plot, The Conjuring is suspenseful in a very terrifying way. The cast is top notch, which tells you something right off the bat about the quality of the story, and the film feels like a blend of Hitchcock and modern paranormal cinema.

One thing modern horror films forget is that what you don’t see is often times a lot more horrifying than what you do see. The Conjuring doesn’t forget that and it’s not a coincidence that it’s looking like it could be the next great horror movie.