Saw

Saw (2004)

Saw first published by Movie Gazette, October 24, 2004 Adam (co-writer Leigh Whannell) wakes up to find his leg shackled to a pipe in a large, filthy bathroom, with the surgeon Dr Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) chained to the opposite wall far out of reach. The presence in the room’s centre of a bloody corpse…

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

First published by SciFiNow “There’s a case in Long Island he’d like to discuss.” In James Wan’s The Conjuring, this last line spoken by Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) to her husband Ed (Patrick Wilson) alludes to the couple’s most famous (and most filmed) paranormal investigation at Amityville. In fact, Farmiga had originally said ‘in London’, conjuring the…

Chapter

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

Insidious: Chapter 2 first published by movieScope “It’s still happening,” declares Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) near the beginning of Insidious: Chapter 2. “I heard the piano playing downstairs by itself, and I found Callie on the floor.” “I just want to move on,” replies her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson), with a resigned sigh. This exchange…

Insidious

Insidious (2010)

Insidious first published (in a shorter version) in Little White Lies If James Wan’s debut feature Saw (2004) was a clever resurrection of the giallo, if his Dead Silence (2006) revived the ‘killer ventriloquist’s dummy’ of The Great Gabbo, Devil Doll, and Magic, if his Death Sentence (2007) looked back to the reactionary vigilantism of…

Conjuring

The Conjuring (2013)

The Conjuring first published by Grolsch FilmWorks. “Nothing’s a toy – not even the toy monkey.” This is how demonologist Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) describes to a journalist the artefacts, collected from countless cases, that he and his wife Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) keep locked safely away in their home. We have already been introduced to a…