James Wan one of the golden boys of modern horror has had several swings of the bat trying to recapture the psychologically scarring experience that was the Saw-franchise with another terrifying home-run of a horror film. Dead Silence and Death Sentence (both released in 2007) were fairly disappointing while 2010s Insidious was only slightly better it was with last years The Conjuring that Wan matched and even succeeded the terrifying heights reached with Saw all those years ago. The Conjuring is very much a womans horror film. The Perron family father and mother Roger and Carolyn and their five daughters move into a dilapidated house and while Roger is away making a delivery to Florida a series of supernatural events force Carolyn to send for external help. Not only is the antagonist a witch but the clairvoyant who comes to their aid is also female. When the haunted house is occupied by just the women there is a heightened sense of impending danger as Roger isnt there to offer his physical security. The scene where we actually see an unobstructed sighting of Bathsheba, the accursed witch, crouched over the top of that huge wardrobe in the girls bedroom is one of the most ridiculously petrifying in recent cinematic memory and is on its own enough to earn The Conjuring its place on this list.
Hailing from South East London, Sam Heard is an aspiring writer and recent graduate from the University of Warwick. Sam's favourite things include energy drinks, late nights spent watching the UFC with his girlfriend and annihilating his friends at FIFA.
