With so much geek culture being the thing in the mainstream right now, it’s not surprising to see horror following suit. The dark and sleazy edges of the genre have been pushed to the fringe (again) and horror is again making blockbusters - big summer blockbusters that are roller coasters of excitement as the creators gleefully make us jump out of our seats with well-timed jump scares and a seemingly endless assortment of haunted houses to exploit.
James Wan is at the center of all this, having perfected his Hollywood horror skills, which began with the first “Saw” movie and has gone from there to “Dead Silence” to “Insidious” to the first “Conjuring” movie. Is “Conjuring 2” his peak? I guess time will tell but it’s a slick and steady successor to his original that has big box office written all over it. This is not a low budget exploitation movie that happens to catch on - this is Hollywood moviemaking through and through.
The protagonists of the “Conjuring” movies are Ed and Lorraine Warren, real life ghost hunters brought to film by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The movie version sees the twosome motivated by love and God to help people who need help. While often in horror the ghost hunters are really just there to provide exposition, Wan uses the Warrens as the emotional crux of the story - it’s their faith that anchors them to reality and it’s the devil himself attacking that faith that causes conflict.
For “Conjuring 2” the story starts in Amityville briefly before moving to London and the Enfield haunting which is, essentially, the British equivalent of our Amityville horror. There’s nothing especially shocking about the concept: a family is being haunted by something inside their house. It starts with their children and escalates, until the Warrens themselves are called in.
The difference between this movie and the lesser versions that pop up is Wan’s steady hand. His kind of horror is one of timing - he leaves the camera on a spot in a dark room, sometimes something happens, sometimes nothing happens. How he manipulates that timing is where his horror comes from. When we’re comfortable, he attacks. When it’s bad, he makes it worse. It may not be genius, but it’s still pretty dang effective.
“The Conjuring 2” has a secret weapon, though, one that’s a little surprising for a horror movie these days. Whereas so much horror is bad things happening to unlikable people, there’s a real compassion laced through this movie. The family being haunted is being given enough time to breath that you do start wanting the terror to stop. Again, that compassion is carried over to the Warrens. This is not a movie where you root for the monster, for sure. Even scenes where each Warren talks to the haunted girl (a splendid Madison Wolf) tug at the heart strings without being cloying.
Still, the movie does suffer a bit from Hollywood excess. The last battle is needlessly long and puts its thumb a little too squarely on the themes of the piece. As much as the movie is based on true events - the last act is such an obvious exaggeration, it doesn’t lessen the experience per se, but it certainly takes it from something that may have happened to something that’s clearly a big, expensive action set piece.
There’s horror that makes your skin crawl and leaves you wondering why you even watched the movie in the first place. “The Conjuring 2” is not that kind of movie. This is a bright movie - a roller coaster ride where you hide your eyes but don’t lose sleep at night.
Unless of course, you hear something go bump in the night. At that point, you’re on your own.
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