What I feel About Conjuring 2
The Plot
In 1976, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren document the Amityville murders at the Amityville house, to
determine if a demonic presence was truly responsible for Ronald DeFeo Jr. mass
murdering his family on November 13, 1974 and the subsequent haunting incident involving
the Lutz family. During a seance, Lorraine is drawn into a vision
where she relives the murders and discovers a demonic nun figure, before seeing
Ed being fatally impaled. While she is being strangled by the figure, Lorraine
is able to break out of the vision.
One year later, in 1977, the Hodgson family begins to discover
strange occurrences within their home in London. Janet, the second oldest of four children, is
seen sleepwalking and conversing in her dreams with an entity in the form of an
angry old man, who insists that the house is his. Eventually, all siblings of
the house and their mother Peggy witness paranormal events occurring right
before their eyes, forcing them to seek refuge with their neighbors. When the
media attempts to interview the Hodgsons, Janet is possessed by the old man,
Bill Wilkins, who is revealed to have previously lived and died in the house,
and wants to claim his territory. As Janet begins to show more signs of demonic
possession, the story eventually reaches the Warrens, who are requested to
assist the local church in the investigation. Lorraine, in fear of her vision
of Ed's death becoming reality, warns him not to get too involved in the case,
and reluctantly agrees to travel to London. She has yet another vision of the
demonic nun in the collection room wherein the demon says its name, which
Lorraine scribbles in her Bible.
While staying at the Hodgson residence, Ed and Lorraine consult
with other paranormal investigators, including Maurice Grosse and Anita Gregory, on the legitimacy of the case. They
also attempt to communicate with Wilkins' spirit, hoping to talk him out of
harassing the family. One night, after the Hodgsons witness Janet being
possessed, Gregory presents video evidence of Janet purposely wrecking the
kitchen as if for a prank. Ed and Lorraine are then convinced to leave the
family on their own, but soon they discover that the spirit of Wilkins is only
a pawn, being manipulated to haunt Janet, while the true mastermind is the
demonic spirit that has been haunting Lorraine in her visions.
Ed and Lorraine return to the Hodgson residence, only to find
Janet being possessed once more and the rest of the Hodgsons locked outside the
house. A lightning strike hits a tree near the house, leaving a jagged stump
resembling the object that impaled Ed in Lorraine's vision. Ed ventures inside
the house alone, and finds Janet standing near the window, ready to leap onto
the stump and commit suicide. He manages to grab Janet in time, but finds
himself holding onto a curtain that is being torn from its rings by his and
Janet's weight. Lorraine remembers that she wrote the demon's name – Valak – in her Bible. She enters the house
and confronts Valak, addressing it by name and successfully condemning it back
to Hell.
Janet is freed of her possession, and Lorraine pulls her and Ed to safety.
A text epilogue reveals that Peggy lived the rest of her life in
that house and died in 2003, sitting in the same spot in which Wilkins had died
40 years earlier. Upon returning home, Ed adds an item to his and Lorraine's
collection – "The Crooked Man" zoetrope toy
owned by Peggy's youngest child – placing it near April's music box and
the Annabelle doll. The couple then dance to "Can't Help Falling in Love"
by Elvis Presley.
Please take a moment and have a look at my written novel Rise of
the Ghost Ebola: The Birth
PeFirst,
the all-important question: Is The Conjuring 2 scary? Like, jump out of your
seat, watch through your outstretched fingers scary? The answer to that is
“yes.” Under James Wan’s direction, even the most clichéd haunted-house tropes
(and this movie is bursting with them) are genuinely creepy, and although the
movie isn’t overly reliant on jump scares, the ones it does use—well, they
work. On a lizard-brain level, The Conjuring 2 taps into the universal childhood
fear of the dark, and some of its simplest moments—like a little girl hiding
under the covers with a flashlight—are its most effective, bolstered by
skillfully executed sound design and Don Burgess’ gloomy cinematography.
Speaking
of tropes, that’s where the “based on a true story” bit comes in. The main plot
of the film revolves around a real-life incident known as the Enfield
Poltergeist, an extremely well-documented case of a supposed ghost
who terrorized the Hodgson family of North London from 1977 to 1979 and was
apparently a fan of the classics: knocking on walls, shaking beds, throwing
furniture, and even the occasional haunted kid’s toy. And as malevolent spirits
often do, it picked on one of the children in particular, 11-year-old Janet
Hodgson (Madison Wolfe). Call it a collective delusion, or a desperate cry for
attention from a disturbed child. Or call it what the movie very explicitly
calls it: The Devil.
With
this installment, the Conjuring movies
may have overtaken The
Exorcist as the most
Christian of horror franchises, taking place in a universe where the Catholic
Church is the spiritual S.H.I.E.L.D. and demon hunters Ed (Patrick Wilson) and
Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) its holy roller super-agents. The film opens
with the Warrens investigating the famous Amityville case, during the course of
which Lorraine first encounters the hellish presence that will haunt her for
the next few years. Fearing for his life, she begs her husband to suspend any
future paranormal investigations, to which he reluctantly agrees. Until, that
is, a priest arrives to give them their next mission: Travel to London and
confirm the veracity of reports of a demonically tinged haunting.
Both
Farmiga and Wilson are given their chance to shine in spooky set pieces—Farmiga
early on in the film, Wilson later. But while they’re both convincing in
spiritual warrior mode, Wan’s decision to play up the romance between the two
doesn’t quite work. We knew that the Warrens were a happily married couple in
the first movie, but having them each individually tell the story of their
paranormal love and Ed make suggestive comments about the sleeping arrangements
seems odd, maybe because they’re flirting in front of a possessed pre-teen
whose soul is currently in the process of being swallowed by the Pit. (On the
other hand, this is just another day at the office for
the Warrens.)
The
non-horror elements of the film are uneven in general: The score, so effective
in the fright scenes, suddenly evokes eye rolls when things start to get
sentimental, and there’s one scene of unintentional comedy where the film’s
retro ’70s setting—another element downplayed in the first film but
foregrounded here—collides with its demonic imagery in an honestly pretty silly
way. (The Conjuring 2 shares its predecessor’s eye for
period details, some of which seem out-and-out ridiculous until they’re
juxtaposed with photos of their real-life counterparts in the end credits. The
on-the-nose pop music gets no such redemption.) That being said, there are also
some truly funny moments, like a shot of the Hodgson family running from their
haunted house after a particularly intense bout of psychokinetic activity that
riffs on smartasses’ favorite retort, “Why don’t they just move?” (And, for the
record, they don’t move because it’s public housing, and the local council,
which is naturally quite skeptical of the whole “ghost” thing, has to approve
the relocation.)
It’s
also worth noting that The Conjuring 2 is more than two hours long, allowing
for lots of escalation. And while each
individual haunting scene can be white-knuckle intense, by the dozenth or so
such shock, the film starts to lose momentum. So the final confrontation, when
it does come, is a relief in more ways than one. The long running time also
allows Wan to overthink his demonology: The main villain, an infernal nun, is
appropriately nightmarish, if reminiscent of the veiled “Bride In Black” from
Wan’s own Insidious.
(See: exhibit A and B.)
What’s less compelling is the insertion of the “Crooked Man,” a storybook
scarecrow monster that starts spreading Babadook-esque
chaos about halfway through and is explained as the demon assuming a form
that’s familiar to the Hodgsons. Which would be fine, if it weren’t for the two
familiar forms that the spirit has taken already.
When The
Conjuring 2 focuses its
efforts on scaring the audience, it succeeds, wildly. And why wouldn’t it?
Wan’s got his horror technique locked down at this point. It’s the parts where
it wanders away from the basics of creating and releasing tension that prevent
it from outdoing its predecessor.
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