Posted by I had seen the original Conjuring a long time ago and had forgotten most of what had gone on, but I had a vague feeling that I liked it so I went ahead and started on The Conjuring 2.
This time instead of being set in the USA, it’s set in Britain where a family is being haunted by an old man who died in the house. It’s a family of four, a mother and her three kids; two daughters and one son. It’s also set back in the late 70’s or early 80’s like the first movie.
Lorraine and Ed Warren (protagonists and ghost hunters from the first movie) are asked to investigate this house and the family to make sure the church won’t be embarrassed by associating themselves with a hoax. The Catholic church is very hesitant to get involved with an exorcism unless they are convinced it’s real. They set up cameras and recording devices to try and gather evidence that this in fact an actual demon/ghost haunting… that’s when most of the creepy stuff happens. One of the daughters is more in tune with the ghosts than the other, and she’s able to channel the spirit through her and have the old man speak to Lorraine and Ed. The boy has toys that turn on at night, the house is always cold, there are things lurking in the dark, etc. It’s a slow build up of weird and fucked up shit happening leading to a crescendo at the end. There’s also a plot B where Lorraine is having visions of her husbands death and the ghost from the last movie continues to fuck around with her and her family.
I felt like the acting was pretty great. Patrick Wilson (Ed) and Vera Farmiga (Lorraine) were pretty fantastic. Frances O’Connor who is the mother of the kids was also fantastic. The kids themselves were okay, it’s really rare to get a kid who can act well enough to be on par with the adult actors and actresses in a film. I would say that these kids did a better than average job compared to some of the other horror movies I’ve seen recently that also focus around kids.
The special effects were mostly good, but there were a few moments where I straight up laughed when the movie was trying to be funny. The old man was just not all that convincing to me when he was trying to scare Janet. He kept yelling “MY HOUSE” and I just kept giggling. However, this is part of the reason why I enjoy horror movies, sometimes they’re so bad they’re good.
As a side note, the music choices and the sound effects are pretty great through the whole film.
My rating: 6.5/10