Movie Review: The Conjuring 2

There was a ghost story in the news.  I remember it vividly. Every night, the buzz over the book, “The Amityville Horror,” made all the crime and economic woes of the seventies pull into a very different perspective.

“You could be living down in Amityville.”

Oh, how my morbid soul would have loved it.

My older brother even read the book. This was a big step. He didn’t even read the directions on the shampoo bottle.

I was hooked.

Then? Then there was a Halloween documentary special on ghosts. Right there on HBO. My mother treated us to cable upon the passing of my father-it made sense, for soon we’d be latchkeys and need something to do.

And I watched that ghost video show a few times.

A precursor to YouTube videos, I’m sure.

On that little movie, they played back the tapes from a very documented case.

The Enfield Haunting.

The fact was, the tapes had just been released, and, due to the proximity of the famed Amityville haunting, the press was keeping the attention up and as strong as possible.

I was enthralled. My mother was hesitant. She noticed something was up when, instead of heading downstairs at the Emma S. Clark library, to the kiddie stacks, I instead went to the Dewey triple O’s.

I was researching. I found out the tales of Bell Witch Haunting. The Amityville Horror. The Borley Rectory.

And Enfield. Information about that was still short. But it would keep my interests for quite some time.

Until this Christmaskkah, when a friend told me about a special right there on BBC. I had to watch.

And I remembered. The chills and fascination returned.

It’s with this visage I came to watch the The Conjuring 2. I absolutely loved The Conjuring. Yes, it take massive dramatic license with the books I had read. But? The tale was full. And this was not a dead teenager movie. This movie (the Conjuring) truly was like the Amityville Horror. There were no dead bodies. But there were scares; pale faces; spooky rooms; ripped wallpapers. I loved it for the same reason I loved the Haunted Mansion. The long drawn out sequences and the feeling that there’s just something spookier around the next corner. There’s something creepy going on. And the audience was drawn in.

I was annoyed that they made a sequel.

Then we saw it.

Okay, they should have called it The Conjuring 2 as a subtitle. Because, what James Wan has done? He’s recreated the first scary tale, keeping all the fun creepy stuff and the two main protagonists, and plopped them down in a new, ‘true-life’ ghost story.

And this movie is actually pretty good, believe it or not.  The only drawback? Well, the sequences are a bit drawn out. It’s evident to me that he’s got experience enough that he knows the audience expects a jump with every specific, lingering camera angle. So those moments tend to be longer and longer,

But I will admit, at least twice, there were scares that had NOTHING to do with jumping, but were so deliciously creepy that I applaud their use. In fact, at the conclusion, I realized that special effects were pretty much not uses. Instead, a production design that kept us well aware of the house’s mapping and claustrophobia; actors that telegraphed their concerns so well, that I was a bit worried.

Do you like the Haunted Mansion at the Disney parks? You like the mood and atmosphere over just the standard dark-ride scares or those cheesy Halloween prank houses with teens in bad make-up? Then you’ll like this movie.