Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Vera Farmiga, and Ron Livingston in The ConjuringTHE CONJURING

I was about halfway through my screening of The Conjuring when I noticed that I was having a most unusual reaction to director James Wan's haunted-house opus: For the life of me, I couldn't stop smiling.

Mireille Enos and Brad Pitt in World War ZWORLD WAR Z

Beginning with the fact that it's directed by Marc Forster - a competent-enough craftsman whose previous works (including Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner, and the deadening James Bond entry Quantum of Solace) have hardly been known to quicken one's pulse - practically everything about the suspenseful and exciting zombie chiller World War Z feels a little bit off, and that's what I liked about it.