The Conjuring 2

They don’t make horror movies like this anymore, unless your name is James Wan, of course.

The sequel to the 2013 original, The Conjuring 2 sees our returning paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), travel across the pond to London to investigate a potential case of child possession. When seemingly explainable events start taking a turn towards the unexplainable, Ed and Lorraine have to pull out every stop and technique up their sleeves to try and save the people they have sworn to protect from a demonic and ruthless entity that has invaded their home and family. With the same demon tormenting Lorraine in her own visions of the paranormal world, the Warrens have to quickly figure out a way to rid the London house, and Lorraine, of this entity before it drags everyone down past the depth of insanity to what lies beyond.

Much like anything director James Wan has touched horror-wise since the original Saw, The Conjuring 2 is a treat for regular audiences and horror fans alike. His films usually combine some kind of awesomely twisted idea with genuine frights that don’t reduce themselves to cheap jump scares and bad acting as the sole reason for audiences screaming in terror. Continuing to live up to his good name, Wan has really outdone himself with this one, more so with regards to the actual scares than what he tries to cram in between, but still!

Sequels usually don’t fare the best when it comes to the genre of horror; very select few franchises get better with age and if a sequel works, it works because it’s the same creative forces behind the original trying to top themselves in one way or another and this film is a perfect example of that. It expands on the mythology built in the first film and spends a lot of time setting up the main story while taking the time to make sure we remember that we’re watching actual characters onscreen as opposed to watching expendable horror-fodder like how many other films in the genre treat their protagonists. While it’s nice to see the care and attention paid to developing relationships with said protagonists, it detracts slightly from what we’re watching. I’m not saying that doing this was a bad idea; it’s just that I came to see a horror film, not a drama wrapped in horror trappings.

Luckily when the drama disappears and the scares rear their terrifying head, things get real good real fast. After all of the horror films Wan has had a hand in, it’s a wonder how he still has enough fresh ideas to sustain an entire film. Filled with unique and new ways to scare the shit out of people, Wan does an incredible job of building the sense of dread and tension these types of films live and die by. Dabbling in everything from an exorcism, to some poltergeist scares, to straight up creature horror mixed with a slasher mentality, the script is always throwing something different at the audience, and while I love the effort and overall quality of the scares, at some point it was a bit overwhelming.

Clocking in at a far too long 134 minutes, this film is a wall-to-wall scare-fest that relies too heavily on bringing the audience to the brink of terror only to bring them down, then back up again and so on. Don’t get me wrong, this is how you do a horror film, but with so many scares and so much going on, it gets a bit tiring after a while to a point that I wasn’t as tense as I should have been during certain scenes because I had already been dragged though the gauntlet over and over again and was ready for anything they threw my way. Great horror films use that sense of dread a handful of times, leaving the overall tone and look of the film to fill the other cracks with a sense of danger and dread, but in this film, it’s a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” type of mentality that hurts the film only slightly, but just enough to sense that maybe some of the film’s scenes needed to be cut and/or shortened. It almost seems like the filmmakers had some dope scenes in mind and instead of organically inserting them into the film, simply strung them together to make a movie out of it, and with the story relying too heavily on stagnant plot progression, it’s easy to dock the film for attempting too much. Weird gripe, I know, but even with a great film like this, balance is the key to everything we’re supposed to be experiencing, terrifying or otherwise.

Last things last, if I don’t get a Crooked Man spin-off ala Annabelle, then I’m rioting in the streets…no joke. That goddamn thing was equal parts terrifying and disturbing enough to steal the show more than once.

When all is said and done and the last remnant of the darkness plaguing our heroes finally fades, The Conjuring 2 stands tall as what a sequel should be rather than what it could potentially be. With a runtime that is far too long and some subplots that feel uneven and odd at best, James Wan has crafted a damn good horror film that excels with the new and inventive ways he has devised to scare audiences silly. While the wall-to-wall nature of the scares dilutes the overall experience a bit, I’m looking forward to another installment in this franchise with hopefully many more to come.