50 Greatest Horror Movies Of The 21st Century
10. The Conjuring
Plot: Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) try to help a family being haunted by a horrific demon.
With The Conjuring, the best thing to do is imagine your typical 2000s studio horror film. A badly-executed supernatural horror story that wastes a great cast and filled with cheap, tension-killing jump scares - we all know the type.
So, try and picture that type of film except, you know, actually really great and you've got The Conjuring.
It truly is the antithesis of the typical studio horror flick from this time. The characters are compelling, none of the cast are wasted and best of all, it's completely and utterly pant-browningly terrifying.
A exhilarating tour-de-force of painfully effective scares directed to perfection by the great James Wan, this is easily one of the most purely frightening horror films of the 2010s, and at the time of its release it provided a welcome reminder that horror could still be great in the right hands.
The many sequels and spin-offs that the film spawned have been more of a mixed bag, but some of them - especially the surprisingly excellent The Conjuring 2 - are definitely worth seeing.