The Conjuring 2

In The Conjuring 2, we get to watch a master at work, and it's director James Wan.  He uses so much skill here using the silence and subtle instances in the shadows and backgrounds that he puts just about most every other haunted house movie out there to shame.  In fact, the only time Wan and the movie itself slips up just a little is when he's forced to rely on conventional jump scares, and some unconvincing CG.  Fortunately, he doesn't do this very often, and this comes across as the rare sequel that had very little studio interference.  This may be the most tense and effective paranormal thriller I've seen since The Babadook. 

Just like the original film from 2013, The Conjuring 2 also sets itself apart by actually being about the people at the center of the story.  It's an emotional drama as much as it is about things going bump in the night.  It's also unnecessary to see the first in order to enjoy this, as the only connection are the two main characters, real life paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) Warren.  This film follows another famous case from their files, "The Enfield Poltergeist", a supernatural occurrence that happened in London back in 1977, and is still hotly debated by believers and skeptics to this day as one of the more famous hauntings.  You know walking in whether this movie is going to side with the believers or the skeptics, but it does at least allow both views to be reasonably expressed.  And while I didn't exactly believe all the details of this "true story" that were being displayed on the screen, it did not dampen my enthusiasm for the story that Wan and his screenwriters were telling.

During the first hour of the film, we actually see little of the Warrens, although we do get to witness part of their investigation in one of their more famous cases in the effective opening sequence.  Instead, we're introduced to a working class London family, the Hodgsons.  Single mother Peggy (Francis O'Connor) is trying to keep her family and four children together after her husband walked out on her.  The kids include eldest daughter Margaret (Lauren Esposito), middle child Janet (Madison Wolfe), 10-year-old Johnny (Patrick McAuley), and youngest Billy (Benjamin Haigh).  It is Janet who becomes the focus and central victim of the haunting that begins to occur in their home, where she is terrorized by the spirit of an elderly man claiming that the house is his, and that she and her family don't belong there.  The spirit quickly becomes malevolent and aggressive toward the child and the family in general, and when their haunting starts making national headlines (after the police are called to investigate a disturbance, and see things they can't quite explain), the Warrens are called in to investigate and determine whether or not the whole situation is an elaborate hoax. 

What The Conjuring 2 does better than just about any other haunted house movie out there (certainly better than the last one I saw, The Darkness) is create a mounting sense of dread.  Wan achieves this with long camera shots, use of shadows and subtle movements or changes in the background, and things happening or appearing just out of focus.  His method is slow and deliberate, but highly effective, and generates more thrills than any other horror movie so far this year.  The movie has been given an R-rating, but it contains no language or nudity, and very little violence.  Instead, he has embraced the rating in order to give us a relentless sense of tension that a PG-13 ghost story simply could not achieve.  This was the same case with the original movie, and it's really wonderful to see a director not only embrace what worked before, but also build upon it.  This is a wonderfully constructed film, giving plenty of moments to the terror as well as effective character-building moments, and sometimes combining them in the same scene.

Also just like before, it is the performances of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as the Warrens that anchor the movie.  The chemistry and relationship that they have built on screen in these films is so strong, this could be the rare case where I want to see a horror franchise build, as long as it continues to be built around the connection between these two, and also as long as James Wan is willing to return to the director's chair.  The love and emotional bond between Ed and Lorraine plays a key role here, and creates an emotional pull that few other horror films have.  We're invested in them just as much as we are the spirit haunting the Hodgson home.  Also effective in the cast is young Madison Wolfe as the terrified Janet, who obviously creates a lot of sympathy, but can also be terrifying when she is used as a vessel by whatever is in her house.

Should this series continue, I truly hope that the studio realizes what makes them so effective to audiences, and leaves the formula alone.  The Conjuring 2 is one of the few sequels this year that doesn't feel like a total cash grab, and has actually been mounted with care and the need to tell a story.  It's an ingenious little ghost story, and just a lot of fun.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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