25 things you didn’t know about your favorite horror movies

The Conjuring – An even darker true story and an R rating for pure horror

Whenever a movie is based on a true story, it makes it that much creepier. Maybe that’s why The Conjuring is so absolutely terrifying.

In 1971, Roger and Carolyn Perron move to an old farmhouse in Rhode Island with their daughters Andrea, Nancy, Christine, Cindy, and April. They get more than they bargained for with their new house after they find a boarded-up secret basement, and soon, the house is being plagued with strange noises.

When scary occurrences keep happening and reach nightmarish levels, Carolyn contacts famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. They discover that their home is surrounded by satanic spirits — and the Perron family is their new target.

In real life, the house was so steeped in evil spirits because of eight generations of families that lived and died in that house. Since the state of Rhode Island doesn’t require all criminal activity to be disclosed to potential home buyers, the Perrons had no idea.

For those of you who have seen The Conjuring, you may have noticed that, unlike most horror movies, there’s no sex or nudity, and not much profanity. It’s also relatively tame in regards to blood and gore. Most of the movies on this list struggled to get a PG-13 because they were too vulgar or gory, but in the case of The Conjuring, it was just too scary!

The filmmakers were told by the MPAA that the film was so scary that there were no possible edits they could make that would make them change the rating to PG-13. Since the filmmakers didn’t want to make drastic changes to the film, they accepted the R rating. Surely they took that as a compliment, anyway!