The Conjuring

A few days back I finally caught up with the movie The Conjuring, which I have been meaning to watch since its release. Now, I wish I had watched it in the theater. As I speak of the movie there might be inadvertent spoilers ahead, though I would try not to disclose much about the movie. It isn’t exactly a suspenseful thriller which would lose its charm if anything is revealed but I’ll let the reader watch it and decide for themselves. The movie is advertised as a true story based on the life of the Warrens (Ed & Lorraine) who were a couple of paranormal investigators. The story centers around the Perrons who have moved into a farmhouse which appears to be haunted and for which they seek the aid of the Warrens. What I found interesting about the movie is that the scares used are subtle and woven well into the plot that nothing feels superfluous, they don’t seem like tactics… the scenes seem integral to the movie and I was engrossed. The movie was also paced well, no jittery or parallel timelines which sometimes hinder the flow of a plot if not executed with caution. Horror movies at times have an issue where either too much is happening or too little is happening in them… takes away from the viewing pleasure. This one has just enough going on. Something weird happened while I was watching the movie. I was watching the movie at night (I can’t remember a time when I haven’t watched a horror film at night). There is this scene in the movie where the clocks all stop at 3:07 AM. It is a moment of importance to the storyline and to the events that influence it. As the scene played on screen and the camera focused on the grandfather clock onscreen with the time stuck at that precise moment and slowly panned out to take in the room, my brother who was until then silently watching the movie suddenly said this…

Bro: Look at that… oh my god… just look at that. Me: (Not looking away from the screen and presuming he has seen something on it which I have missed) What do you see… where? I can’t see anything. Bro: Look up you doofus! Me: (looking at the top of the screen) Errr… huh? Bro: Not the screen, the clock… our clock.

I looked at the wall clock in our living room, above the doorway to the side of the TV. The time on its yellow face was exactly 3:07 AM. I blinked and looked again, yep… 3:07 AM it was. There was no mistaking it, the clock has Arabic numerals! I checked my cell-phones, two of them… so did my bro… they all showed 2:56 AM. A weird moment for us, we never realized that the wall clock was so out of sync with the rest of the time-pieces in the house… and it was faster than the actual time. For what seemed like a long time, I kept staring at the clock face willing its hands to move… the seconds needle seemed to drag itself around and finally it completed its rotation and the minute hand moved to the 8th minute… 3:08 AM. I realised I could breathe again. Quite the longest spooky minute I have had. I had to rewind and play the scene back as I had concentrated my senses on our wall clock. Ah well… the spooky coincidence added to the likeability of the movie. I guess I would have missed that if I had watched it in the theater.

© Surya Murali