TechnoNews - The most telling aspect of The Conjuring 2, the gonzo
sequel to the 2013 horror smash, is that it's 133 minutes long. A running time
like that is a rarity—The Exorcist, at 132 minutes, may be the strongest
analogue—because the genre draws intensity from concision, and its dread-soaked
mysteries are not so easily sustained over time. But director James Wan, who
made the seventh The Fast and the Furious entry between the two Conjuring movies,
has figured out how to adapt the genre to the blockbuster age, when studios are
batting for a home run every time they step to the plate. This is no mere
haunted house movie. This is a tour through a giant, spring-loaded funhouse.
For evidence of Wan's horror maximalism, look no further
than the opening sequence, which finds real-life ghostbusters Ed (Patrick
Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) Warren holding a seance at the famed Dutch
Colonial in Amityville before moving onto something bigger. Consider that for a
moment: Scary happenings at the Amityville house—second only in horror
iconography to the Bates house in Psycho, the subject of 14 movies (and
counting) and numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and semi-fiction—are a mere
throat-clearing for The Conjuring 2. Wan's last feature had cars
parachuting from a plane onto a mountain pass. This one has a room full of
crosses that get twisted upside-down like a doorknob to the gates of hell. Like
any director of a blockbuster sequel, he takes the mandate to top himself
seriously.
The Conjuring 2 mostly justifies the bloat, because
Wan's style is wonderfully energized and nimble, with a camera that roves
quickly, sometimes madly, toward danger and a restless escalation of stakes. He
also has legitimately compelling lead characters in Ed and Lorraine, whose
profession and marriage the movies take seriously, even if the real world
received them more skeptically. After a vision at Amityville prophecies her
husband's death and brings a frightening new demon into her conscience,
Lorraine insists they take a step back from active casework and act strictly as
consultants instead. It doesn't happen, of course, but the depth of feeling
between them gives the supernatural threat more weight.
Seven years after Amityville, Ed and Lorraine are summoned
to a modest old home in the London borough of Enfield, where single mother
Peggy Hodgson (Frances O'Conner) and her four children are besieged by a
poltergeist. Peggy's youngest daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe) has been haunted
and occasionally possessed by an exceedingly cranky old spirit who wants the
Hodgsons out of his home. The Warrens are called in by the Church in an
unofficial capacity, but as their skepticism falls away, their mission to help
the spiritually afflicted draws them into the fight.
As with The Conjuring and his two Insidious movies,
Wan lifts from a generous smorgasbord of influences, combining the urban
possession of The Exorcist and the multi-dimensional child abduction
of Poltergeist with Spielbergian moments of humor and wonder. Never
much for gore—even Saw, his extreme-horror breakthrough, is more about
pain than plasma—Wan instead amplifies the scares with old-fashioned effects
and a hyper-aggressive soundtrack. There are at least five or six full-body
shivers in The Conjuring 2, and most of them come through jump-scares done
right, with each ghoulish surprise punctuated by blasts of unholy guttural
noise.
There's nothing particularly distinctive about The
Conjuring 2, which is more about repurposing old effects than adding new ones.
(Its generic qualities extend to the music cues. When the action shifts to
London, Wan cuts a montage to The Clash's "London Calling," which was
recorded two years after the movie takes place.) What it lacks in originality,
however, it makes up in moxie. Wan turns the Hodgson residence into whirring
gizmo of demonic effects—a self-propelled fire truck, a zoetrope come to life,
a leather recliner of the damned—that never stops moving. It's like the Hodgsons
have taken up residence inside a shark's mouth and the beast is relentlessly
chewing. Wan brings the monster vividly to life, and in its scaled-up hokum, The
Conjuring 2charts a future for studio horror.
Apart Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson dan Frances O'Connor This movie also played by Madison Wolfe, Lauren Esposito dan Benjamin Haigh. But also in other countries such as Canada, India, Vietnam and Bulgaria.
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