This week’s sequel is the follow up to one of the best horror films of the decade. The Conjuring was a highly effective fright film that captured the sensibility of 70’s horror. No real gore. No false jump scares as the cat is discovered launching from behind the shower curtain. Just a slow-burn pace that delivered high-tension fear.
That film’s flaw sat in the conclusion as the story took a turn towards The Exorcist rip off. Levitating chairs and tortured demon screams; the last 15 minutes of The Conjuring seemed to belong to another lesser movie.
The sequel- aptly named The Conjuring 2- focuses a little too much on revisiting that last 15 minutes of the original. While there are plenty of reasons to chew on your fingernails the film possesses too many components in common with The Exorcist to make the 2 hour and 10 minute running time acceptable.
I simply don’t think director James Wan should make sequels. Let’s be clear here, Wan is very good at scaring you. Like it or not, he helped popularize the Torture-Porn sub-genre helming the original Saw film at the age of 26. He did very little for a few years until he gave us Insidious. While that movie has some issues, it is another film with plenty of true scares to be found. But Insidious: Chapter 2 didn’t have the punch of the original either. Wan seems more comfortable with original material and his best work spawns from it.
Not to say The Conjuring 2 is a waste of your time. There are many scenes that will cause you to close your eyes in avoidance. There is an absolutely killer moment where Patrick Wilson interviews a possessed 11 year old girl with his back turned to her. There is a brilliant use of blown focus that still haunts me.
The cast is fine. The effects are fine. You will be scared and jump at plenty of places. The film just needed to have about 30 minutes cut from it and could have used a little of that ingenuity found in the original.
