There's nothing like doing something so familiar so well.
The real magic here is that James Wan knows his audience so intimately. Few other directors can so precisely hook their audience in the opening shot and keep them dangling until about a minute into the final credit crawl. Especially in horror. Especially in a sequel. Especially when the film is almost two-and-a-half hours long.
When I told people how excited I was that The Conjuring 2 was happening, most of them rolled their eyes. While that didn't deter me in the slightest, I was intrigued when the usual explanation hinted that there was nothing new or fresh about haunted house / possession films, and that lack of novelty informed the disdain.
It's true that the tropes of these subgenres of horror are so familiar as to induce more humor than fear. There are only so many times you can see a cross invert itself, a girl's head spin around, or a demon lunge from the shadows before you know what to expect and lose your frisson. And yet, though I've seen countless such movies (as have many fellow audience members), I still jumped and shrieked at appropriate places, as did the few other couples with me in a matinee showing, and I still had trouble relaxing that evening.
A big part of that is delivery, and whether or not the audience would admit it, the technical aspect of horror filmmaking does impact their appreciation. I saw the first Conjuring with several friends, many of whom don't ordinarily get "scared" in movies, all of whom really enjoyed it and described it as one of the best scary movies in recent memory. Now, I don't know about you, but in retrospect, there's really nothing very novel about that movie at all. It's a totally rote exercise in basic supernatural horror, a hodgepodge of Amityville and Exorcist given over to a director who takes his time building the suspense and dread. The beauty and lasting resonance of that film comes in with that same director, who both reintroduces us to the Horror 101 of solid filmmaking and storytelling in horror pictures, and turns classic tropes on their side to show us that even in familiar narratives, style can be heightened and exaggerated to provoke the appropriate response. Does that make sense? Think of the simplistic genius of the hide-and-clap game; the multiple scenes of this game require no special effects, no gore, no tricks of lighting, and only an old-fashioned master of dread to properly use cameras, mix sounds, and elicit raw fear from his actors.
While this sequel features nothing on par with hide-and-clap, it does do several other things right, which we'll get to presently. I won't deny, though, that it is, first and foremost, a sequel, and reminds us repeatedly of that fact. It's big and noisy, exaggerated and excessive, fast and furious, and not quite "better" than the first. Examples: Here we don't just have one supernatural entity (the witch in #1), we have two (one of which, like Annabelle, will be getting its own spin-off film). Here we don't have one family fighting evil, we have two. Here we don't have one crucifix on a wall turning upside-down, we have about a hundred inexplicably tacked to a bedroom wall that exhibit synchronized spinning. Overkill? Hell yeah.
In fact, I'd compare this film to Insidious: Chapter 2. You know how that one lost a lot of the bleak, monochromatic look of the first film and replaced it with loud, mostly heavily saturated colors and fast-moving images that raced across the screen? In many ways, Conjuring 2 is its soul-sister, revving up the action and the jump-scares with even more striking visuals and shrieking musical crescendos (provided once again by the brilliant Joseph Bishara). Wan's cinematographer, Don Burgess (Enchanted, Spider-Man, and almost all of Robert Zemeckis's films), proves himself wonderfully fitted to the genre and the heavy stylizations of his director, panning slowly across space and time in wonderfully detailed sets to paint a perfect picture of terror.
One of my favorite things about Wan's movies (especially this one, because it's the one I'm thinking of) is his ability to focus our dread and fear into places that are both painfully obvious and chillingly not. His oxymoronic approach to the uncanny, Freud's unheimlich, is masterful, both in his incarnations of evil (his monsters, so to speak) and in his vision of daily life. Consider the demon in Insidious, the mother in Insidious: Chapter 2, even the Jigsaw mask/doll in Saw: almost campy in gaudy colors and thick makeup, but terrifying in obviousness. Consider, too, the vehicular images of fear: an average exorcism where the possessed is covered in a sheet, for example, where what otherwise is ordinary carries the weight of something new, mysterious, and therefore fearsome. Think of the commonplace wardrobe, the closet, or in this movie the tent at the end of the hall. These are in every home, yet here we see them in their chilling glory.
What does all this have to do with Conjuring 2? Everything. This film features similar Wan trademarks, upping the ante on spectacle along with content. The emotional arc of this film is much stronger (Vera Farmiga's Lorraine Warren envisions her husband's untimely death and battles with her faith and doubt), to match the frenzied antics of supernatural entities. The central ghost of this movie, an old man previously inhabiting the house, is repeatedly seen in the chair where he died. During one particularly brilliant scene, as Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) questions the family's possessed daughter, he has her sit in that chair to more effectively invite and channel the spirit. As the spirit demands, Ed and Lorraine must not look at the girl while she speaks in his voice. Ed turns from her, and the camera focuses sharply on his face in the foreground; in the background, however, we see her blurred figure, and as she begins to speak as the old man, we slowly see her transform into him. It's a painfully slow shot, milking us every second to question what we're seeing and straining our eyes to perceive the hidden horror, and one that perfectly demonstrates Wan's luxurious mastery of his craft.
I'm not saying it's a perfect movie. Some of it was too extravagant for me, some felt forced and artificial. But when a scary movie consistently keeps me on edge for over two hours, along with keeping me engaged and interested, it joins my list of favorites.
IMDb: The Conjuring 2
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