Directed by:
James WanCinematography:
Don BurgessComposer:
Joseph BisharaCast:
Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Frances O'Connor, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh, Simon McBurney, Franka Potente, Patrick McAuley (more)VOD (4)
Plots(1)
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson star as Lorraine and Ed Warren, who, in one of their most terrifying paranormal investigations, travel to north London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by malicious spirits. (Warner Bros. UK)
Videos (16)
Reviews (13)
Given the time James Wan took to make the sequel to the best American ghost movie in recent years, The Conjuring 2 is
surprisingly unsurprising. Newcomers might be stunned by his amazing style, as he is one level higher than all of his
horror genre colleagues, but those who know him well need some added value in the form of a good screenplay, which
is missing here. The change of setting to England is refreshing, but the course of solving the Hodgson case is a step back
in its abundant use of genre clichés.
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Wan has obviously run out of horror ammo. Visually, it again attacks the atmospheric mastery and imagination of Guillermo del Toro, but in terms of content it’s desperately boring and mired in scenes that are simply passé given the genre's recent years. The runtime reeks of an attempt to establish the warmest possible sympathy with the victims and Warren, which is understandable, but the horror filler is so bland this time that we are left with creative intentions rather than a truly "ghostly" and nerve-wracking experience. The day after the screening I hardly remember a single truly scary moment, apart from the hilarious final 15 minutes. The simpler and more straightforward Lights Out stuck in my head incomparably more. 50%
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Wan is doing the same thing for the thousandth time, but he still knows how to tighten the strings famously, even though he uses the same thing and you actually feel a bit ashamed that you keep eating it up ("My home!"). This is true of the first half. The second half is a bit of a muddled screenwriting mess, where the supremacy of the ethereal child cast is ended by special effects and narrative imprudence. The first film is dramaturgically tighter, although it is actually about the same thing.
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James Wan's The Conjuring 2 was the clear dark horse of this year, and even though I find it a bit weaker than the first part, it will probably still take the first place this year. Wan's signature is evident in every aspect. Excellent camera work, impressive interiors, when a scare is supposed to come it doesn't and vice versa (Wan is just great at this), and I have to praise the villains, the Nun and the Crooked man were so amazing that I want to see a solo movie with them (The Nun is even confirmed already). The first hour suffocates with a pretty aggressive pace where almost every five minutes you don’t know what's coming next, but after the Warrens arrive there is a pretty long pause where I was bored at times, for which I also take off a star. The finale, though shorter, is decent. The exorcism in the basement in the first one was more intense though. As far as scares go, only two impressed me, but that's more due to the number of horror films I've seen and my resistance to scares. There isn't and won't be anything better in the horror genre, and that needs to be acknowledged. Story 7/10, Atmosphere 9/10, Gore 0/10, Visuals 8/10, Action 6/10, Suspense 8/10, Humor 3/10. Entertainment 8/10, Scares 7/10. 85%.
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I’m glad that James Wan didn’t turn his back to the horror movie genre, as he had originally claimed, and that he filmed another mysterious story from the life beyond the stage. And I honestly say that I ignored the illogicalities – and there were quite a few of those – and I was enjoying the high-quality cinematography, which took me to places I didn’t expect and that also told a story that was interesting from its beginning to its end. I also have to add that I liked how the director didn’t necessarily lean only towards the horror movie as a genre and that he had a go at a couple of funny moments executed in proper British dry humor. I also thought that some of the scenes that looked like they fell out of Tim Burton’s head were pretty great. I simply didn’t watch this movie to get scared. I was mainly looking forward to the movie telling another ghost story, which is something that has been quite fashionable recently.
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