By Dustin Hall
Back in 2013 I posted a review for The Conjuring, and in many ways I feel like I could just copy and paste that same review here and be done with it. That shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a criticism. The Conjuring was a very successful horror film, a rarity these last few years, and the large numbers of fans of that film will also find much to like here. James Wan’s horror productions can be very hit and miss, the popular Insidious series being crammed full of cheese and melodrama. Conjuring 2, while not being bereft of cheese, manages to keep it to a minimum, and continues to stand out from its peers for having clever scares mixed with strong characters.
This installment opens with a side-trip to Amityville, where we see the resolution of the Warrens’s investigation in the house, through the eyes of Lorraine Warren during an out of body experience. The visual translation of this is great, and we can really see how Wan, and his budget, have grown since the original Insidious and its trek through a very minimalistic afterlife. As Lorraine relives the infamous DeFeo killings, we get a glimpse of a new specter, a ghostly nun, whose presence will continue to haunt the Warrens, and ultimately lead then to their next case.
After this really clever opening, the Warren family takes a back seat for the first act of the film, as the story focuses solely on the family at the center of the Enfield Haunting, and particularly on young Janet Hodgson. As with The Conjuring, James Wan takes deliberate care to match the events of the case to the pictures and descriptions of the events from witnesses. All of this adds a nice flourish to a film that claims to be ‘based on a true story’. While the build-up of the haunting itself is nothing new, both in the use of decades old ghost tropes and the fact that Enfield has already had several movies based on it, Wan’s direction remains solid, with great visuals, a good use of audience expectations to create suspense, and knowing how to time a jump scare. He’s really gotten good at finding new ways of making people yelp with the same stupid gags.
And again, what would be normally a very standard ghost story is saved by the Warrens, in particular Lorraine Warren. Lorraine is the heart of the film, and definitely the main character, as the strain placed upon her by her psychic visions is brought to life by Vera Farmiga. Her relationship with her husband Ed, played by Patrick Wilson, plays a major part in the events of the tale, and allows the pair to grow beyond the standard, generic ghost hunting characters that litter most films. The Conjuring 2 also makes use of the skepticism surrounding the haunting, largely believed to be a hoax perpetrated by a family in need of new housing and revenue from selling their TV-movie rights, and acknowledging it as a way to create tension and distrust between the characters. Of course, the audience has been right there with the family since the beginning of the haunting, and one has to wonder if an opportunity wasn’t missed to make the audience guess as to the veracity of the events they had just witnessed, and add a deeper layer of mystery to the film.
The weaknesses in the film remain the same as with Wan’s other outings. There’s a bit of cheese, some hammy lines, and some faults in the film’s internal logic. The film portrays the possession of young Janet as not simply a ghost trying to take over a home, but as the master plan of a demon, possibly from Amityville, creating a long and elaborate series of events meant to… stab Ed Warren with a stick? As with most haunting films, the motivations of our villainous creature don’t make a lot of sense, and require the entity to forget for most of the film that it can lift human beings off the ground, and toss things across the room with lethal force. The visual representation of the ghost, the Crooked Man, is also ridiculously bad. While the Demon Nun looks adequately creepy and sinister, the Crooked Man is a CG abomination, a cartoony cross between Jack Skellington and a goomba from the Super Mario Bros. movie who removes any real sense of dread from whatever scene he’s in. That design should have stayed at home in direct-to-video horror films.
Failings aside, The Conjuring 2 is a really entertaining ride, and those who enjoyed the first one won’t be disappointed. It may not scare old-school horror fans or appease those who want more blood and guts, but it’s a solid haunted house flick that’ll probably have casual audiences poopin’ in their pampers. If nothing else, James Wan continues to showcase his growing visual flare, adding some new scare scenarios and visual tricks to his impressive resume, while adding a newly discovered maturity and appreciation for character moments that were missing from his previous works.