The Conjuring 2 (2016)

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nDirector: James Wan

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nCast: Patrick Wilson, Vera Fermiga, Madison Wolfe, Frances O’Connor, Franka Potente, Simon McBurney

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nThe Conjuring (2013) was one of 2013’s best horror movies,nit harkened back to those serious horror movies of the 70’s that made audiencesngasp and scream in the theater, then go to church the next day. It was the kindnof movie that took advantage of people’s fears of the supernatural, of demons,nof Christian mythology. Which means that if you’re a church goer, you’d find moviesnlike The Conjuring extra scary because suddenly demons, possessions andnsupernatural shenanigans become that much more real. The Conjuring was the kindnof horror film that got people talking, it had that “buzz” around it, whichnalways translates to big bucks at the box office. And of course, one successfulnfilm is always followed by a sequel that will usually stick to Hollywood’s rulesnof giving us more of the same, only bigger and louder and with double thenbudget, which is exactly what they did for The Conjuring 2. Did it manage to benentertaining anyways? Does it avoid the trappings of ‘sequelitis’ a term us movienbuffs use to refer to sequels that tend to go down in quality as a franchisenmoves along? Did The Conjuring 2 suffer from this ailment?
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nThe Conjuring franchise is based on the supernatural adventuresnof The Warren’s, a couple that specializes in helping others deal with theirnsupernatural problems, in other words, if you ever have any trouble withnghosts, demons or poltergeists haunting your home, you don’t call the Ghostbusters,nyou call The Warrens. In case you’re not up to date with who The Warrens are,nwell, let me enlighten you.  Ed andnLorraine Warren are real life paranormal researchers. They’ve been helpingnfamilies deal with their supernatural troubles since the seventies. Theirnpopularity grew when they visited the real Amityville home, there are picturesnof this! Look them up, on your search, you’ll probably stumble upon pictures ofnthe Raggedy Ann doll that had the habit of moving by itself and scaring thenliving shit out of some family. Said doll ended up being the basis for a filmnproduced by James Wan called Annabelle (2014). Of course, many of these storiesnare total bullcrap and don’t have an ounce of truth to them. In fact some of themnhaving been proven to be hoaxes. But whether these stories are real or notndoesn’t matter because it gives the filmmaker an excuse to put the “based on antrue story” slogan on the poster and boom, audiences are crapping their pants evennbefore the movie has started.

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nFor the Conjuring 2 James Wan decided to focus his story onnone of the many cases that The Warren’s got involved with, the one commonlynreferred to as ‘The Enfield Poltergeist’. Do a little search on this case and you’ll find pictures of these cases, the families, their homes, their frightened faces, of course, these pictures will only make the filmnall the spookier, because these people existed and supposedly experiencednsomething like what we are watching on the film, albeit a bit exaggerated for dramatical purposes. You can even hear the voice of Janet, thenlittle girl who was supposedly possessed by the ghost of an old man. In thenrecorded interview, this little girl talks in a scruffy voice which will have you believing in demons and possessions in no time flat. The premisenfor the film is that an angry ghost is terrorizing a family in England and ThenWarren’s are called in by the Catholic Church to be their unofficial eyes andnears on this thing, to make sure that it’s not a hoax. Of course it turns outnto be super real and they end up fighting the specters. Question is,  will they survive the ordeal?
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nWhat I’ve always liked about James Wan is that he is anmaster at orchestrating a good scare. He might not be all that original innterms of the stories he chooses to tell, because most of the time you can tellnexactly which films he is feeding from, but when it comes to scaring your pantsnoff, he knows how to do it beautifully! If you’ve seen other James Wan films, like say the Insidious films, then you’ll feel a familiarity here, he uses some of the same scares, but some of the scares are pretty original and well orchestrated, so expect a little bit of the old (like toys moving on their own) and a little bit of the new. And speaking of how Wan feeds off other horror films, The Conjuring 2 feels like a mixnbetween The Exorcist (1973), The Amityville Horror (1979) and Poltergeist (1982),nbut that’s probably because all of these films are feeding off the same sourcenmaterials, three  of the most famous “supernatural”nstories out there. The possession of Anneliese Michel, which served as thenbasis for The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and The Exorcist (1973), ‘ThenEnfield Poltergeist’ which is the case that inspired Poltergeist (1982) and thenmost famous case of them all, The Amityville Horror case which spawned a wholenseries of films on its own. What James Wan has done is, he joined all thesencases in one huge hodge podge of a supernatural film. Hell, we even get demonicnnuns on this one! So when people say that Wan has thrown everything but thenkitchen sink in there, they aren’t kidding.
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nJames Wan started his directorial career as a horrorndirector with SAW (2004) and Dead Silence (2007). He even kicked off ansuccessful horror franchise by directing Insidious (2010) and Insidious:Chapter 2 (2013). The Conjuring (2013) was his most successful horror film tondate scaring in more than 137 million at the box office on a 20 million dollarnbudget. When your horror film makes more than six times its budget back,nHollywood tends to give you free reins on what you want to do, they also tendnto throw big budget projects at you which is why Wan ended directing Furious 7n(2015). Wan even hinted at quitting horror for good, but I never bought it. It’sninteresting he chose to go back to his horror roots with The Conjuring 2 (2016).nIt means he’s a real horror nut at heart, without realizing it; he’s becoming antrue blue horror director, could he turn out to be one of the greats of hisngeneration? Time will tell if he sticks with the genre. His next film is Aquamannfor Warner Bros, yet another big budget film that’s sure to be successful, sonit looks like we’ll be seeing Wan directed films for a while. But will henreturn to horror? All I can say is he’s demonstrated great ability at tellingnhorror stories, He’s shown great command over choosing the right angles, the appropriatenlighting, the camera movement, the control of atmosphere…he knows how importantnthese elements are, how important it is for it to be raining, for those skiesnto look gray, for that wind to be blowing and those leaves to be rustlingnthrough the grass. He understands the importance of sound and music in a horrornfilms, he knows how these elements work best and he uses themnto tell his stories in the spookiest way possible. Here’s hoping he doesn’tngive up on the genre!

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