You know, I was planning to actually open a thread for this film a few days ago but got lazy.
Went to see the film last Friday at my local cinema by myself.
Excluding all opening and ending credits, the movie runs for a total of a 1 hr 45 mins.
The first hour quite easily contains the best horror moments without resorting to graphical violence, CGI effects, and gore. Instead, with have atmosphere, a haunting soundtrack, sound effects, spooky environment, camera angles, and it quite delivers excellently when it psychologically plays with our anxiety and fears.
Since I'm quite an impressionable guy, all the time seeing the screen my body was building stress due to the ever present ominous pressence looming in the film.
As for the latter half, I do agree that the rest was pure Hollywood-style flick, particularly the exorcism scene.
Now, a few days later as I was googling I found information that supposedly Perron's family case, depicted in this movie, was the scariest the Warrens, in real-life, ever took part in it, and they refused to disclose any information about that case at its time.
Probably, if they released this film, then maybe it's more than likely everything could have been a hoax in order to milk money; I read all the criticisms and conspiracy theories revolving around the Amytiville case to make valid my last statement.
As for those of you who are wondering, if the Warrens really have all that scary stuff stocked up at their home as the movie showed? Yes, they did in real-life, and the place is still running in the present.
They called it the "Warren Occult Museum" and is run by both Lorraine Warren and her son-in-law, Tony Spera. And, just like the movie depicted, the museum still has all those ominous warning messages saying, "DANGER DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING"
Here is the evidence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeFINbEOFEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UbO9KukxR4
And here is the real Annabelle doll, which was made scarier in the film by Hollywood standards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ey1QFvcz4c
For some real facts, the Warrens founded in 1952 the New England Society for Psychic Research.