Rewatchables Reference

• Bill: The stretch from 'Where's Rory?' through to the exorcism – finding the hole in the wall, Vera Farmiga falling in the basement, Lili Taylor getting fully possessed.
• Chris: The shot where Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston are standing in one room and their daughter comes flying across the room and hits the window. 'That's the scariest scene in the whole movie.'
• Sean: The clapping game – Lili Taylor plays hide-and-clap with her daughter, then sees hands emerge from the armoire and clap, realizing it's the ghost.
• The opening scene with the two girls and the Annabelle doll sets the tone perfectly.

• Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga – perfectly cast. Farmiga especially: 'She's a weirdo... her energy is really strange and so she's perfectly cast.'
• The 1973 period setting makes the movie timeless.
• The Annabelle doll design – in real life it was a Raggedy Ann doll; they redesigned it to be creepier.
• The 'infestation, oppression, possession' three-stages framework for demonic activity.
• Lili Taylor's casting and performance.
• The premise of the locked artifact room in the Warrens' house, which spawned an entire franchise.

Ron Livingston's performance – 'I just wanted more from Ron Livingston... he's just kind of a helpless loser.' The character has no defining traits other than 'cool shirts.' His wife is possessed by a demon and he's like 'wait no, don't go over there honey, are you okay?'

For Ron Livingston's role – Bill picks Jon Hamm with 'big bushy sideburns.' Chris suggests Titus Welliver. Bill's second pick: Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka from The Wire). Sean suggests John C. Reilly. John Hawkes also mentioned.

• John Brotherton as 'Brad' – 'I don't even know who that guy is. But any time I see him now I'm like, Brad.'
• Joey King mentioned as a retroactive that-guy since she went on to bigger things.

• Lili Taylor – 'but in a good way.' She's possessed, so she has to overact. 'If you underplay possession, you failed.'
• Outside candidate: Joey King, who gets the most freaked out by the ghosts/demon.

• Patrick Wilson: 2013 – 'The Conjuring' plus the 'borderline iconic' episode of Girls.
• Lili Taylor: This is her Apex Mountain commercially (lead in a $318 million movie), though personally for Bill it's 'Say Anything'.
• Haunted House movies: Possibly Apex Mountain for the genre.

• Nobody dies (other than the dog Sadie). 'With the level of demonic possession we are dealing with here, one of Brad or Drew should probably bite it.'
• The Warrens tell the family to go to a motel, but they'd established earlier that the demon can follow you anywhere. So what was the point?

'Sure. Sounds great.' Sean notes they basically already did this with The Haunting of Hill House.

• 'What's Bathsheba doing right now?'
• Bill jokes: 'What's Bathsheba's take on the bubble?' (referring to the NBA bubble).

• Sean: Lili Taylor – 'she's the heart and soul of it.'
• Chris: James Wan (the director).
• Bill: Vera Farmiga – 'she finally found her lane.'
• Split decision.

• The production team built a 50-foot tall fake tree for the film.
• When the real-life Perron parents visited the set in North Carolina, they claimed to feel a cool wind whip through the set with no trees moving.
• Rhode Island is one of the few states where sellers don't have to disclose deaths or incidents that happened in a house.
• At the end of the movie, Lorraine gets a phone call about a case on Long Island – teasing the Amityville Horror connection.