This document provides a 679-word comparative essay analyzing the horror films Sinister and The Conjuring. It summarizes that both films involve families who move into haunted houses where previous murders occurred. The houses are cursed so that every family that lives there meets a grim fate. Both films feature many paranormal events that terrify the families in the early nights of living there. Ultimately, the characters in each film become possessed by demons - Carolyn by the spirit Bathsheba in The Conjuring, and Ashley by Bughuul in Sinister. While neither family survives in Sinister, the Warrens perform an exorcism to save the family in The Conjuring. Overall, the document expresses a

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME: TEY THIEN HEE
STUDENT ID NO: 0318676
FILMS SELECTED: HORROR FILM
WORD COUNT: 679 WORDS
ENGLISH 2 (ELG 30605)
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 1: COMPARE – CONTRAST ESSAY
LECTURER: CASSANDRA WIJESURIA
SUBMISSION DATE: 5TH DECEMBER 2014

2. “ If films are the dreams of the mass culture…horror films are the
nightmare.”, said by Stephen King, Danse Macabre. What is horror? Horror
is an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully
shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear. Even though people are
afraid of horror, they still try to terrify each other with tales that trigger the less
logical parts of our imaginations through films. Horror films usually deliver
thrills and fears, as well as telling us stories of the dark and the forbidden side
of a life. Therefore, I have chosen Sinister and The Conjuring as two of my
horror films for my comparative essay.
First of all, the first similarity between two of this films is two of the
families move into the new house that had been cursed and haunted but they
didn’t figure it out until all of the panorama events starting occur continuously
in their houses. In Sinister, the main actor Ellison Oswalt, a true crime writer
brings along his wife, Tracy and their two children, 7-year-old Ashley and 12-
year-old Trevor move into the murdered family’s home. While in The
Conjuring, Roger and his wife, Carolyn Perron move into a dilapidated
farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island with their five daughters Andrea,
Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April.
Secondly, two of the houses were cursed that every family moves in
the houses must be murder or suicide. In Conjuring, the farmhouse was once
belonging to an accused witch who named Bathsheba. She sacrificed her
week-old child to the devil and killed herself in 1863 after cursing all who
would take her land. The property was once more than 200 acres but has
been divided up to smaller parcels. Numerous murders and suicides in
houses are reported that have been built upon parcels that were once part of
the property. In Sinister, every family had previously lived in the house where
the last murder took place, and each new murder occurred shortly after the
family moved into their new house. All the family members were drugged
before being killed and one of their kids will went missing. Bughuul, a pagan
Babylonian deity as known as Mr.Boggie is the one who kill the entire families
and take one of their children into his realm in order to consume their souls.
Nevertheless, tons of panorama events happen within the first few
nights and two of the families got freaked out in both of the houses including
all the clocks stopping at the exact same time in Roger’s house, Sadie found
her dog dead in the back yard and Nancy and Christine were awakened by a
spirit that slams the door and said “ I want your family dead”. Meanwhile in
Ellison’s house, Ellison heard a noise within the home and been fooling by
one of the spirit of all of the missing children, he heard the film projector
running by itself and he found all of the missing children were watching one of
the films in the attic.
The most similarity part between two of these films is the characters
have being possessed. It is about a demonic possession and it’s affect on
both families. The spirit of Bathsheba has possessed Carolyn and she tends
to kill two of her daughters, Christine and April by using scissors. Ed and
Lorraine Warren, the paranormal investigators manage to help them and

3. perform the exorcism and finally save their whole family’s life. On the other
side, Ellison’s daughter, Ashley is under Bughuul’s possession. Ellison, his
wife and his son are bound and gagged by Ashley and she murders them all
with an axe afterwards. She uses their blood to paint images of cats, dogs
and unicorns on the walls. None of her family members survives.
In a nutshell, I enjoy watching The Conjuring than Sinister as it plays
out a more scarier and realistic version. There is many terrifying scenes that I
didn’t expect in the film and it really does freaking me out at times. This is how
a horror film should be.
(679 words)

4. Citation
1. James,W. (Director). (2013).The Conjuring [Motion picture].
United States: New Line Cinema, The Safran Company,
EvergreenMedia Group.
2. Derrickson, S. (Director). (2012).Sinister [Motion picture].
United States: Blumhouse Productions,Automatik
Entertainment, Alliance Films, IM Global.