It was Monday night at the movies and based on two thumbs up from a couple of different hands (David and Fred) I took KM to see “The Conjuring.” It was the 7:05 showing, and lightly attended, with about 40 of us, all looking for a good scare. I wasn’t disappointed.
For those of you who didn’t see David’s recent “Critic’s Corner” review on “The Conjuring,” I agree with him that you should see it. It’s well done and intensely scary. I should have known I was in trouble when it began with a story about an evil, psycho looking doll, who just wouldn’t stay inanimate. As Fred says, “If you have a scary doll you can be certain it will move around. I don’t need inanimate objects becoming animated, especially, evil, psycho looking ones.
The movie isn’t about the doll though thank goodness. It’s about a family who moves to a big house in the country. The man and his wife have five daughters, and a beautiful hound named Sadie. The day they arrive at their new home Sadie refuses to come inside. And it isn’t long after you see that she was correct in her misgivings.
Things proceed to go bad pretty rapidly and the mom enlists the aid of world-renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who would later be involved in the more famous case in Amityville. Remember it from the 70’s? Remember, “Get Out?” Still applies today, maybe even more so.
I won’t spoil it but for those of you who might be moving to a haunted house soon there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, pay attention to your pets. Not so much goldfish or hamsters, but if your dog won’t come in your new digs then you are likely have a bigger problem later.
Next, stay out of the cellar. Nothing good ever happens down there. And the lights never work, especially after you get all the way down the stairs.
Third, don’t play any hide and seek games where you’re required to wear a blindfold.
And last, if you start waking up with lots of bruises, it’s probably not an iron deficiency.
When KM and I walked out of the theater I said, “Wow, that was intense.” She agreed but added, “I don’t know how much of it I actually saw though.”
•••
Last weekend KM and I headed over to Oxford for the weekend, Mississippi, not the UK. I had been once before, two years ago to an Ole Miss football game.
We arrived and while checking in to our hotel I ate a chocolate chip cookie that the lady working there had wanted us to try. KM declined. As she told me, “You don’t lose 46 pounds in ten months by eating every chocolate chip cookie that every hotel clerk asks you to try.”
I asked where our room was and the cookie pusher laughed, like I was kidding with her. But I wasn’t and, through the giggles, she told me where to go.
KM led the way through the double glass doors as I walked slowly past the cookie display. Cookie pusher said to have another but this time I declined. You don’t reduce elevated triglycerides in just over two weeks by having sugary seconds; firsts were bad enough.
After depositing our bags in the room we headed out for some sightseeing. I was trying to find downtown and the historic square, and after that, Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, where hopefully there would be some friendly, literary-type ghosts hanging about.
I’ll let you know.