Movie Review: The Conjuring 2

In an average year I make it to about 18 movies in the theatre; half of them are easily Oscar nominees in January and February, and about six are various Superhero/Wizard/Spaceship films (which would be a movie I'd see entirely based on the title).

This tends to leave me with about two movies a year in theatres and in my chosen Genre, the horror film. More often than not these end up being post-apocalyptic films as they look better on the big screen.

Last night, however, I went to an advanced screen of The Conjuring 2, director James Wan's follow up to his 2013 original featuring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the paranormal investigators who, worked on cases like the Amityville Horror and the Enfield Poltergeist in the 1970s and 80s.

The movie was a lot of fun for me for a number of reasons:

1) Wan is getting really great at doing supernatural horror - although he is still probably most famous for the originalSaw (which is well worth a watch), the Insidious and Conjuring films show a really neat progression of his work behind the scenes, laying out the various home and characters before fully submerging them into the horror of the story, and working well on both the over the top and the subtle in horror.

2) The leads are pretty incredible, getting you to invest in them as a couple first and then using the strength of their relationship throughout the horrors of the film is a great way to show the power of a good relationship.

3) If you happened to catch the BBC mini-series The Enfield Haunting earlier this year, as I was, you're in for even more of a treat as that story follows the same events but from the supporting characters point of view - in many ways horror relies on perspective to be most effective and these two versions of the same story actually helped each other a lot.

Although I didn't like this film quite as much as I did the original Insidious (which, as a story not based on true events, could take some very interesting jumps) it is a solidly effective horror and left me hoping for more if the film does well.