‘The Conjuring 2’ review: Scarier than the first

James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 begins by fulfilling the promise made in the end of the first film. Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively) have finally made it to Amityville, the little town in New York state that has been made infamous by a grisly mass murder, supposedly incited by the devil.  

 

The famed ghost-busting duo is there to check the veracity of the alleged demonic possession, and true enough, Lorraine, who can go into trances to commune with spirits, spots an evil nun who threatens her and her husband.

The experience leaves her rattled enough to convince her husband to start retiring from their unique work.

However, in Enfield in England, a family is starting to experience very weird things in their featureless home. This again forces the couple to pack their bags to help untangle the mysteries behind the haunting. 

Surpassing its predecessor

The Conjuring 2 is that rare sequel that surpasses its predecessor. 

The film is clearly unconcerned by the need of most contemporary horror films to separate itself from the traditional methods of the genre. There is absolutely nothing new to any of the processes, and the scares are all familiar.

A mysterious knocking here. A television going out of control there. Ominous shadows everywhere. The film borrows most of its techniques from the classics. 

Even the narrative holds barely any surprises. 

The Conjuring 2 unravels like a cleverly plotted mystery. Characters, separated by distance but connected by an affinity with the supernatural, are joined in a deliberately paced fashion. This allows each individual’s stories to reach their tipping point before providing the possibility of a solution.

It is all quite masterfully planned, all seamlessly maneuvered to allow for its many scary sequences to outshine what feels like a stale and predictable story. 

More human 

What separates The Conjuring 2 from most haunted house movies is its meticulous design.  

Wan has mastered the craft of sustaining a certain air of terror, of creating suspense out of the most mundane moments. He mines the desperate circumstances of a British working class family to create an atmosphere that is strangely ripe for scares. It is the ordinariness that makes the intimidating suspicions more palpable. 

Stripped of the ornate and alien mansions and sordid family histories that dominated the first film, The Conjuring 2 infuses intimacy into its brand of horror. It churns out an experience where the stakes are evidently more understandable, given that they are more plebeian, and in a way, more human.

Wan’s setup is astoundingly precise. Before flooding the film with scares, he first prepares his audience, amply describing the locations, the characters and their situations with scenes that feel inherent to the narrative.

When the hauntings start to happen, they never feel rushed or estranged from the story.  

Worthy entry

Conjuring 2 delivers what is required of it with impeccable efficiency. 

While it suffers from losing steam right at the very end, it is, nevertheless, a worthy entry to a genre that has tropes as old as time. Moreover, Wilson and Farmiga play the protagonists with undeniable gusto, it is simply sinful to not get drawn into their dubious affinity with their shady profession.

If solid scares are your thing, the film has them in spades.

 

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios