In this entry of The Conjuring franchise Ed (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Lorraine (Vera Farmiga), the paranormal investigators, come out of a self-imposed sabbatical to travel to Enfield, a borough in north London to aide an overwhelmed single mother of four who tells the couple that something evil is in her home.
There, living in a rickety old house, where it’s almost always raining and the cellar is usually flooded. The family consists of Divorced mom Peggy (Frances O’Connor), older daughter Margaret (Lauren Esposito), younger daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe), and two younger brothers Johnny and Billy. And, it appears, the angry, destructive, malevolent spirit who calls himself Bill Wilkins when he begins to take over the voice and actions of young Janet.
As in The Conjuring, this is a film filled with aural and visual shocks, along with fluid cinematography, excellent performances and a permeating sense of sinister forces at work.
While the film focuses on the bad things happening in the Hodgson household, there’s also an equal share of what’s going on with the Warrens. They’re at a point in their career where they’re exhausted both emotionally and physically, and are fed up with being called fakes by skeptics.
The stories and experiences of the Warren and Hodgson families are finely intertwined so that the audience feels that a loss for either family would greatly affect the other. It may lack some of the jump-scare of the first film, but The Conjuring 2 more than makes up for this with a healthy dose of suspense and visual effects that combine to tell not just a good horror film, but a good film overall.
Rating: 8/10 Stars
Rich Stile @TheDevilsEyes1