Peculiar Reviewer

We love to be scared. We love it even more when it's based on a true story. Director James Wan  who brought you Saw and Insidious , has a new horror film out -  The Conjuring . The bone chilling tale based on the true events experienced by husband and wife Ed and Lorraine Warren - the paranormal investigator dream team. The film takes place in 1971, where the Warrens give lectures on demonology at Universities, aside from debunking paranormal cases with their years of expertise. The Warrens even have a museum of haunted artifacts in their abode, taken from cases so haunting, they have a priest on the payroll who regularly visits to bless the room. The Warrens are brought on by Carolyn Perron, played by  Lily Taylor ( The Haunting , Six Feet Under ), to help her family of five daughters who are being haunted and taunted by dark spirits in their farmhouse. Things go bump-in-the-night, to say the least....

I switch on my flickering neon Bates Motel sign and have a seat to watch the highly anticipated television prequel to Hitchcock's  Psycho , Bates Motel on A&E . A grown-up Freddie Highmore ( Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Finding Neverland ) portrays demure and awkward 17-year old Norman Bates who lives with his mother Norma Bates, played by the perfectly cast  Vera Farmiga ( Up in the Air , The Departed ). After losing his father, Norma takes a reluctant, yet obeying Norman to a small Oregon town to start a new life. They purchase the Seafairer Motel which is located just on the corner of Murder and Batty Street. Thus, a family business has begun. Bates Motel is quiet and composed (although not by the legendary Bernard Hermann). It is tidy and fully absorbing. Nestor Carbonell as Sheriff Alex Romero is either a direct descendant of Anthony Perkins, or cast because of his uncanny resemblance to the original Norman Bat...