The Nun (2018)

The Conjuring series continues the backward extrapolation of its horror mythology with this prequel to the prequels providing even more answers to the questions no-one was asking about its demons, to date the evil possessors of dolls, children, houses, dreamscapes, the charmless Warrens and now, in this episode (not so much a film as a litany of jump scares flimsily strung together), the possessed is a nun in a convent in 1952 Romania who can bury an exorcist in a box in a moment flat but is reduced to impotent bell-ringing when another wants to dig him up, similarly lickety-split.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Annabelle: Creation (2017)

If you think the remote farmhouse of an emotionally-stunted man - father of a dead 11-year-old and husband of a bedridden Phantom-of-the-Opera-mask-wearing victim of paranormal trauma - is a poor choice for a new home for orphan girls (one of whom has leg braces and needs a motor chair to climb the stairs), then this horror - the origin story of a possessed doll but also confusingly about an evil spirit that can possess anything it likes - is probably not for you.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Insidious Chapter 2 (2013)

Don't expect to be a Rhodes Scholar in the ways of the Further after watching this - just how people pass into and through director James Wan's evil limbo, the Further, introduced in the original Insidious but further elaborated upon in this sequel, seems to no longer depend upon a character being dead - alive or injured or even merely remembered people can hang out there now, so more than before it resembles something like a train station, but still it is never satisfactorily explained - and there are other areas lacking elucidation: scene by scene you'll have trouble keeping track of whose house everyone is in - the Lamberts' or Elise's? - and you'll become dizzy trying to keep track of all the versions of Patrick Wilson's character, Josh, who appears simultaneously as a kid, as an adult, as an adult in memories, as an adult in the Further, as an imposter in each of those places, in flashback sequences as each of those incarnations; and would someone please pick up that baby walker because I don't want to watch a fourth and fifth adult come down those stairs to investigate the piano only to get a jump when the baby walker comes alive with noise and light, again.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

The Amityville murders are referenced, the Warrens head to London, and that and the fact Lorraine is reluctant to continue her and her husband's old-school ghostbusting are what distinguish this second outing from the first one -- everything else is so familiar you'll catch yourself checking to see if it isn't in fact the one you've already watched: the Warrens bang on locked doors, tout Christian faith, are struck occasionally with supernatural apoplexy, and again fail to answer any of those nagging questions you have about inhuman spirits - why do they sometimes drift across corridors, at other times move as a shadow across walls, and at other times again choose to only appear in reflective surfaces?

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Annabelle (2014)

Doll possession remains a daft science unadvanced since Chucky but there are enough innovative scares in this The Conjuring prequel to counter the movie's many tired horror cliches, and effective use is made of the fact that anything with a frozen stare is pretty chilling - in this respect, Annabelle, one of the ugliest porcelain dolls ever to grace a doll collection, joins the likes of oil portraits and Disney-on-Ice characters.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Conjuring (2013)

James Wan, director of Insidious, a 2010 horror starring Patrick Wilson about a family terrorised by demons, brings us The Conjuring, a 2013 horror starring Patrick Wilson about a family terrorised by demons, but while Insidious was dopey, this is an effective, tighter version of the regurgitated story.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Insidious (2010)

A dopey demon possession story that has nowhere to go except to get increasingly silly, with Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson playing parents of an incessantly crying infant and a possessed boy, all of them helpless in a whirlwind of opening and closing doors, banging furniture, and the most insidious thing, boredom.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS