An admission: Wolverine was never one of my favorite super heroes. I know he’s super popular, maybe the most popular Marvel character, but even just among the X-Men, he was never my favorite. This probably has a lot to do with me not growing up with many comic books, I did have the Gambit limited series and one issue of the X-Men in which Professor X yells at everybody, leaving the cartoon as my main source for the mutant super team. So, unlike Man of Steel (is Superman my favorite super hero? Maybe…) I was pretty willing to let The Wolverine pass me by. It worked so well for Sexman: Origins, after all. But then my dad wanted to go see this, and I saw it. And I liked it.

A few years ago, The Wolverine was going to be a Darren Aronofsky movie. Remember that? That probably would have been a really interesting movie. Instead, another director with some Hugh Jackman experience stepped up, James Mangold, of Walk the Line and let’s not talk about it fame. And what did he deliver? A movie that feels somewhat in between a surprisingly faithful comic book adaptation (like 2 Guns, apparently) and another frustrating X-Men clusterfuck.

So I read Wolverine by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, and it was pretty sweet. Turns out that getting in Wolverine’s head is kinda like getting in Batman’s head. That was a pretty straight-forward story – Wolverine goes to Japan to check up on his girlfriend Mariko, finds out that she’s been married away by her crime boss dad, and basically just fights a bunch of ninjas until he can win back his girl. The movie adaptation is… Different.

You’ve probably heard that Silver Samurai is tacked onto this as a robot, but let’s ignore that and focus on the fact that the character who is Silver Samurai is in this, but not actually the Silver Samurai. He’s just a guy with a bow and arrow. There’s an added plot of Mariko’s grandfather, who Wolverine saved in WWII, working with Viper to take away Wolverine’s powers. Viper! How lame. In the comic, Yukio, one of the ninjas who ends up changing sides, acts as kind of a rebound for Wolverine after he gives up on Mariko, per her request. She’s a tough lady, and cool, and conflicted, but also pretty straightforward. In the movie, Yukio is not only a great warrior, but has the mutant ability to see the moment someone will die and is like a sister to Mariko and seriously X-Men movie people, why you always gotta fuck with this shit?

Not everything new is bad. Since this is technically the first sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand, we see that Wolverine’s dreams are haunted by the spectre of Jean Grey. As we know from The Dark Knight Rises, all super hero movies are really just big dumb love stories, but seeing Phoenix after all the years does give a nice sense of continuity and attachment to the films of my youth. I approve.

This has been a lot of talk about plot, when all you really need to know is that Wolverine fights a bear, a bunch of ninjas, and a robot. The Wolverine has some choice action sequences and some dumb ones, and ultimately it’s fine. It drags for a little while as it tries to set up a Mariko love story as plausible, but I think this version is more interesting than the love triangle from the comic. Things get a lot campier than I expected, with ninjas doing flips all the time just to get around and a ridiculously tall complex in the middle of a tiny village, but I’m not above doofy crap. In fact, I’m well into it at this point. That’s me, I like smart TV and dumb movies.

Who knows how indie horror flicks like The Conjuring go on to be big hits. I doubt people went to The Conjuring for their summer dosage of Patrick Wilson. I also doubt it had anything to with reviews (The Conjuring was well received) because most people don’t read reviews. Was it just the right place at the right time? The opportunity to duck into a cool, dark theater to hide from the heavy sun? Maybe that’s it, because nothing cools you down like getting the chills.

The Conjuring is a supernatural horror film from Saw creator James Wan, also the director of Insidious, another ghost story with Patrick Wilson. The Conjuring is based on the exploits of real-life paranormal investigators Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga). The story is set in Harrisville, Rhode Island in 1971 and details the Warren’s investigation of the Perron family (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) farmhouse after the occurrence of dark paranormal phenomena.

The film acts as both a historical documenting of the Warren’s work in “Demonology” but also adds flourishes of fantasy and mysticism to create an old school supernatural smorgasbord. I use the term “old school” not only to describe the film’s time period but also the methods. The Conjuring is more about atmosphere and what you don’t see then cheap scares. Not to say there aren’t a few BOO! moments but it’s all in good fun. Using a true story as background adds an eerie sense of realism but also provides limitations that work in the film’s favor. No doubt that it does break those limitations from time to time, The Conjuring still works because it never goes too far, it’s a precise and controlled series of scares.

I rather enjoyed the added backstory to the Warrens. We learn of some of their past cases and get a glimpse at their world through a collection of accursed items they keep displayed in their house. Additionally, their investigation techniques that include; cameras, black lights, and various audio devices that provide an intriguing look into a cooky, if not oddly fascinating profession. All that gooble-gobble reminded me a great deal of the 80s classic Poltergeist, which brings me to another point.

The Conjuring adds very little to the already bloated haunted house sub-genre. I appreciate that it’s an adaptation of a true story, it just happens to be a true story we’ve already heard and seen. The execution is effective but plays it too safe. I wanted to see something in The Conjuring that I’d never seen before. Not seeing that made me disappointed but I still had a good time. I just wanted to have a great time. That being said I’m glad I had something worth seeing in this dismal summer season. I guess anything is better than seeing either of Ryan Reynold’s bombs. Now that’s a real horror story.