The Conjuring 2

Year: 2016

Genre: Haunted House / Horror

The financial and critical success of 2013's 'The Conjuring' pretty much guaranteed that New Line Cinema would be backing a sequel. It's decades old list of influences that included Friedkin's The Exorcist, Rosenberg's The Amityville Horror, and Donner's The Omen ensured that both hardened horror fans and newer audience members would lap it up. After taking $137 million dollars at the box office, New Line gave the green light for a second installment, and the 'Conjuring 2' went into production.

Treading very safe waters, the film uses the infamous story of the Enfield poltergeist as it's backdrop. Original leads Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson return as parapsychologists Ed and Lorraine, brought in to investigate claims from a family in Enfield, London that their house is haunted. You would think that with James Wan returning as director, good plot foundations, and leads that have excellent on-screen chemistry, it would be very difficult to make anything that audiences wouldn't happily pay to see...

Wan returning as director was hardly surprising considering his already successful back catalogue of  modern horror films. This is, after all the guy behind the original Saw and 2010's box office success Insidious. His talent lies vry much in suspenseful camerawork, and Wan is a modern master of drawing out the jump scare with long, extended shots of footsteps creeping along creaking floor boards, or peering very slowly through doors that are ever so slightly ajar. More often than not, he will fool the audience into a false sense of security with anti climatic imagery and then hurl the intended part of the scene at them like a bullet out of a gun. This is what Wan does best, and he knows that for modern horror to be a success, the 'jump scare' has to keep audiences guessing until the very last second of the scene.

Being a haunted house movie, 'Conjuring 2' has these scenes a plenty, so naturally, it has a very broad spectrum of appeal that will keep the generic film goer happy. If like me however, you're a seasoned horror fan you may well find yourself very quickly becoming bored of the same old cliches time and time again. The slamming doors, the demonic possessed child, the furniture unpredictably flying across the room. Yep, they're all in here, and it's almost like James Wan had a toolbox of cliches he had to shoehorn into the film before he could call it a day. Those who've seen his previous films will also know that he's famous for creating characters that more often than not transcend the original film they featured in. Think how in the original 'Conjuring', the Annabelle doll was given it's own spin off. Perhaps most famous of all is Wan's self confessed creation Billy the Puppet from 'Saw' back in 2004 which almost became as iconic as Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees. In 'Conjuring 2', Wan attempts to create another iconic creature that clearly has influences in his Saw trilogy but ends up looking like a jokey parody of Billy the Puppet and Marylin Manson. I was personally very disappointed with this aspect of the film, and expected a lot better from the guy who bought me the original Insidious.

The cast largely do a great job with an above average script that fortunately doesn't feature too heavily on the 'up the apples and pears' Cockney stereotype; albeit a soundtrack that is chock full of late 70's mainstream pop. Special consideration has to be given to young actress Madison Wolfe who brings both equal amounts of menace and melancholy to the character of Janet Hodgson. One only has to look at how child actor Noah Wiseman's ear achingly annoying Samuel in 2014's The Babadook can make or break a movie, but fortunately Wolfe's portrayal of the cliched demonic child is aeons less irritating than the aforementioned.

'Conjuring 2' is meat and potatoes main stream horror. If you're a main stream audience member, you won't be disappointed and more than likely come out of it feeling satisfied with Wan's sequel. More hardened horror fans won't find it anywhere near as fresh as It Follows, and far less atmospheric than Jennifer Kent's crowd funded Babadook. That's not to say they won't enjoy it, they just won't find anything memorable, being choc full of cliches and things they have seen a million times before.

Three stars, which becomes 3.5 if you're mainstream.