I didn’t know Conjuring was so well thought of. I liked it though.
Pretty much this. I thought it was fine, not great, but certainly better than shitty trash horror movies like NOES, Friday the 13th, and the like. It was an actual movie with actors, story, and so on.
I know they ran it into the ground with the sequels, but the original NOES is pretty damn terrifying.
Not to mention it had a strong female protagonist and was conceived by a filmmaker who had a vision and a story to tell, a far cry from Halloween-knockoff dross like Friday the 13th which is only about tits and blood.