If contemporary movie fans want to discuss horror films, Wen Ziren must be a director that cannot be avoided.
Coincidentally, the two newly launched horror film sequels are related to Wen Ziren, because they were founded by Wen Ziren.
The first was "Chainsaw 9". Although Wen Ziren no longer directed the first film, the remaining sequels were also screenwriters and producers for the next few films.
The restarted "Chainsaw 9", without Wen Ziren, really walked into a dead end, and the score of this sequel directly failed.
The other one is "The Conjuring 3" we are going to talk about today .
If "The Chainsaw" made Wen Ziren a hit in Hollywood, then the "Conjuring" series can be said to have officially made him the spokesperson of the new generation of Hollywood horror films.
After all, the whole world can use its own influence to expand its own horror movie into a horror movie universe. At present, only Wen Ziren can do it.
In 2013, the cost of "The Conjuring" was only US$20 million, and the final box office was US$319 million . IMDb also scored 7.5 points . It truly achieved a double harvest of word-of-mouth box office, and also opened the green light for the Conjuring Universe plan.
Since then, the Conjuring Universe has started a release plan almost every year, with 8 films released in 8 years.
This "The Conjuring 3" was originally supposed to be released last year. Due to the impact of the epidemic, it was postponed to this year. I didn't expect that the North American theater chain would be basically in a state of half-dead this year, and finally decided to launch it on Warner's own streaming media HBO Max.
However, the reputation of the film in The Conjuring Universe is uneven, and the word-of-mouth situation is basically the same as that of Warner's own brother DC Universe. The two "The Conjuring" directed by Wen Ziren have both become classics among horror films in recent years, and "The Conjuring 2" has exceeded US$320 million , becoming the highest-grossing movie in the Conjuring universe.
However, the reputation of the other films he supervised is basically average, and the same is true of his brother's "Latent" series. After the director was handed over to other hands, the reputation plummeted.
Previously, we had hoped that Wen Ziren would continue to direct "The Conjuring 3". Unexpectedly, Wen Ziren even handed over the ace series of this universe.
And the director who took over was Michael Chavez, yes, his last movie was another bad movie in The Conjuring Universe, "The Curse of the Crying Woman"
Seeing this, I feel that the unfinished situation of the "Latent" series will be staged in this series again.
However, my evaluation after watching the finished film is: the overall is good, the signboard has not been destroyed, but it is not "The Conjuring" directed by Wen Ziren, I always feel that something is wrong.
01
The story of The Conjuring 3 is adapted from a homicide in the 1980s, the first in American history in which a defendant claimed to be possessed by a demon and denied personal responsibility for the crime, and was exonerated.
In my opinion, this case was adapted into a horror film, and there is actually more to dig deeper.
For example, when a person is really possessed by a demon, how can the protagonist make the judges believe in the existence of demons, and can go deeper into whether a mentally uncontrolled mentally kills in reality, whether to pay criminal responsibility.
But the director never thought of showing these things in front of the audience.
However, as a purely scary horror film, this sequel did not make the first two in place.
The most different point from Wen Ziren's terrifying atmosphere is that Wen Ziren's terrifying atmosphere is gradual.
The plot development of the first two films is to move into a new house, and some anomalies gradually appear, such as changing the TV channel and moving the table, so that the audience knows that the evil spirits are beside the protagonist and feel the fear of the protagonists being harassed by evil spirits.
In this way, the ultimate possession can show the power of the evil spirit's evil power, and maximize the horror of the appearance of the evil spirit in the first act.
In the end, the Warrens intervened in the haunted house, inquired about the origin of the evil spirits and the cause of harm, and finally eliminated the evil spirits in a decisive battle.
And this sequel is completely different, perhaps because of the new director's style.
As soon as the director came up, it was the Warrens who exorcised and showed the evil spirits in front of the audience.
As a result, the evil spirit lacks the sense of mystery and horror prematurely. Even if the evil spirit appears again later, the audience's freshness to the second appearance is obviously not as pleasant as the first time.
02
Mystery is one of the important elements in the horror movie genre. When the audience goes to watch a horror movie, they definitely know that there are ghosts in it.
But the most fascinating thing is often where the ghost hides, how it appears, and the story behind it becoming an evil spirit.
The director may know that the evil spirits in the early stage lack mystery, so they are basically divided into two lines later.
The protagonist Arnguan is possessed by a demon in the hospital, and he always presents the classic jump scare scene.
Another line is that the Warrens go to explore the source behind the demon to add more suspense to the film.
I personally think that the Warren couple detective is still very well written. In the end, the evil spirits of the villains from the first two films were replaced by witches in this one.
This innovation combined with the overall good pacing, so that the film did not become a bad movie.
And the "scientific instruments" of the first two films were also missing when catching ghosts in this one.
But I really want to complain, the heroine and the villain are talking as if they are using the Force FaceTime, and the duel in the air is like the fighting method of Maoshan Taoist priests in the Hong Kong film of the last century, only one talisman is missing.
03
Overall, as a horror film, it's a passable production, and I can give it a 6.5 .
But since the first two orthodox films were directed by Wen Ziren, the orthodox sequel will naturally be compared with Wen Ziren, but there is a bit of a gap in quality.
The real Wen Ziren's work is still waiting for "Fatal Induction" in July .
(A digression, why is there such a big gap between the films directed by Wen Ziren and the works produced by Wen Ziren? Another big bad movie this year, "Mortal Kombat", happened to be produced by Wen Ziren.)
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