The Conjuring 2 (Film, Haunted House): Reviews, Ratings, Cast and Crew (2024)

21 Reviews

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Camodon11 Jul 15 2021

Ya its pretty good

Hot take, The Conjuring 2 is better than the first Conjuring movie. The characters and story are arguably more interesting, and the actors do an amazing job at bringing these characters to life. Not sure if I’m just a big wuss, but I found this movie to be very terrifying. Both the Nun and the Crooked Man have such scary looking designs, just them alone make your skin crawl. The movie really catches you off guard at times, the jumpscares are arguably more scary and inventive. Apart from all the utterly terrifying moments, the filmmakers do manage to sprinkle in plenty of light hearted moments. Overall, I found The Conjuring 2 to be as good if not better than the first Conjuring; I’m sure horror movie fans will enjoy this.

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daysight Jul 09 2021

Both the setting and the evil spirits are more interesting in this than in the first movie, still just feels somehow dumb and inconsistent sometimes. Also feels very long, the last half an hour was rather tiring for me, mostly for the stupid decisions of the characters. (But hey, it's a horror movie so what did I expect.) At the same time, the twist and the explanation feels rushed, like a missed opportunity.

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Dan_Sucks Mar 10 2021

It’s funny how much I dug this compared to the first one, especially since it’s Essentially the same sh*t. Basically everything in the last one has been ported to this one. Big family living in a house that’s haunted, Warren family comes to help them, impressively long shots with nifty camera work, spooky but occasionally silly scares, it’s all the f*cking same. Why did I have a better time with this one?

It might just be because I was in a better mood for it anyways, but I actually think this movie is vastly improved by the change in setting. Where the first was set in Rhode Island, this one is set in England. It might be my biases against anglos speaking, but I think it’s a much better environment for a horror story. Where the first Conjuring had a bright, warm setting, a happy family in a big, homely, charmingly ramshackle home, its sequel is gray and wet, with a family that already has plenty problems before the ghosts start f*cking with them. The kids are getting bullied in school, the dad took off, the mom is a heavy smoker, and the house itself is a sh*tty flat. It might sound sad*stic, but misery is a great backdrop for horror.

Setting it in England doesn’t just make the film moodier, but it actually draws out some deeper themes that weren’t in the original. Even as a supernatural horror, the first Conjuring movie is pretty much secular. God is brought up off handedly, and the source of the evil ultimately is witches, but religion basically doesn’t factor into the film at all. Not true at all of the second Conjuring. England being a protestant country, the Warrens have to come in with their Catholic Swag™ and show these heathens how to f*ck up a demon with God’s infinite love and might. I have no idea if James Wan or any of the writers of The Conjuring movies are Catholic, but the movie ultimately espouses a Catholic message, with multiple scenes of the Warrens talking about their faith in God and multiple rationalist skeptics serving as minor antagonists. The Conjuring 2 is brave enough to try and draw lines in the sand, the devil is real, he tries to make us despair, and only God’s strength can protect us. Call it reactionary (arguably. The Warrens are religious, but not judgmental or moralistic. Multiple comments in both this movie and the previous one would suggest they’re actually pretty casually sexual with each other, and they generally seem like pretty easy going characters), call it derivative (without a doubt), but I think its fun. The third act is an epic religious showdown filtered through modern horror jumpscares, and it’s a good time.

Pretty solid recommend for me, I had a blast. Makes me wanna rewatch the original in fear that I missed something and that it’s actually more than decent like this one. I’d be down for tons of pulpy Warren couple movies, the key component being that each one is set in a different location. One in Japan, one in Russia, one in Brazil, it’d be awesome. I know that these are “based on true stories”, but, I mean, c’mon.

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servalan Mar 06 2021

I really wasn't too keen on the first Conjuring movie, but as a haunted house film it was ok- the scares were in the right places, the atmosphere was good and everybody involved seemed to take it seriously enough that it kind of worked. The trouble is that haunted house movies haven't ever really been in short supply and so it was just another one to add to the list. I like haunted house movies, when they're done well they can be effective and genuinely creepy and produce in the viewer that edgy feeling of things being not quite right.
Which brings us to The Conjuring 2.
After getting themselves involved in the widely ridiculed but cash producing Amityville Horror house of death and murder, kooky demonologists and toy collectors Ed and Lorraine Warren find themselves being sent to England by an emissary of the catholic church (Huh? do they have someone who does that? Seeks out self proclaimed demonologists to do the dirty jobs?) to look into the supposed case of some sort of shouty teenagers who have been moving furniture and doing funny voices. The Warrens arrive in a suitably manky 1970's Enfield (a borough of London famous for rifles and washing machines) where they find a very manky house (complete with a pond and water feature in the cellar) and a family who just can't get any sleep at night.

The Warrens, after taking over the investigation from the British psychical investigators, discover that the ghost of an old man called Bill is communicating through an 11 year year old girl and its him who's been causing all the trouble.
Blimey!

The Conjuring 2 has some good things going for it, Vera Farmiga brings some welcome depth to her character and, with the exception of Patrick Wilson, so does everybody else. It is therefore interesting and disappointing to find the film sinking into its own excesses. An over reliance on jump scares illustrates the lack of depth to the script - where there should be a sustained creepy atmosphere there are Cravenisms (things going boo! or jumping out of the shadows) and the films only really creepy image of a Marilyn Manson character in a dress is wasted because they keep showing it and by then it's just become a comedy routine.

To add insult to injury, the Enfield Poltergeist story itself, despite being very obviously contrived by a pair of mischievous kids, was actually more interesting than this. The people doing the investigation were truly odd eccentrics and the family at the center of it all were bizarre in a way that had somebody written them for a film, you wouldn't believe it. As for the Warrens involvement in the true story, rumour is they arrived at the house only to be told to sod off, presumably by a weird girl doing a funny voice. The film has that slick look with a colour palette that was used much more effectively in the superb Babadook, but because everything is so over the top and the house is in such a condemned state you find yourself wondering why they haven't all died of bronchial pneumonia brought on by the fungus on the walls.

For pure entertainment value, this is a real dog, but as we all know, the best laughs are the unintentional ones and The Conjuring 2 is a real riot as far as they go.

The highlight of the film, for me though, was the Elvis bit. Comedy genius.

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VelveetaUnderground Feb 24 2021

2 Con 2 Jured

Gallup needs to do a poll to settle this once and for all: What's scarier, yellow eyes or red eyes? Red eyes are the classic ocular presence of evil: blood-colored, raging, lustful and thus free from rationale, chaotic. But yellow eyes? Something even creepier about them, for my money's worth. Urochromatic, sulphuric, demonic (The Conjuring 2 also experiments with white eyes in the opening scene but that just makes me think of milk, very not terrifying).

I bring this up because no matter how many times I watch this movie, no matter how many times I warn myself, the nun nightmare scene always freaks me out. Seeing its yellow eyes lightly pierce the darkness, those little glints of gold danger still sends a little trill of anxiety through me (this is immediately undercut by the fact the demon runs at Vera Farmiga wearing a f*cking painting on its head, which is one of the funniest images the horror genre has ever produced, but still).

Anyway, The Conjuring 2 is one of the best horror movie sequels I've ever seen, and maybe one of the best sequels in general. James Wan capitalizes on everything that made the original scary and makes it better. The hauntings are more relentless, more violent, the characters fleshed out even more, and the setting, a dilapidated suburban rental with stained walls and a flooded basem*nt, is more intimate and more scary.

Giving the Hodgson family interiority emotionally pays off. We see the kids at school, we know their familial problems. We know the mother is struggling with bills and a very messy husband who's run off. We also see them interact with neighbors and television crews, which has the effect of emphasizing their isolation, not diffusing it. Giving the plot an emotional center, in this case Janet (who, it's noted, is the child most affected by father's absence), also helps focus the attention we put on the characters, something the last movie had an issue with. We also get greater insight into Ed and Lorraine's relationship with religion and spirituality, expanding their complexities and idiosyncrasies. At times The Conjuring 2 feels more family drama, about a group of brothers and sisters and their mum just trying to survive Thatcher's Britain while they cope with a traumatic event. The scenes where Ed serenades the family with his Elvis covers while Lorraine lovingly looks on are genuinely touching, as is the scene where the Warrens are packing it up to go back home (another strength of the movie is the soundtrack).

Still, at over two hours, the movie can drag in the final act, which feels like it's never going to end. And some of the special effects are super shoddy. The Crooked Man, for example, looks like it was done in stop-motion which throws the whole visual tone off. And while the Nun is creepy as sh*t, I think it suffers from overexposure. Like when you're just constantly throwing the monster in our face, it loses its punch. By contrast, giving us a long-distance shot of it just standing the hallway is far more perturbing.

The Nun is probably one of my favorite horror movie villains, and it's a shame its movie namesake is one of the worst entries in the franchise. As I was rewatching The Conjuring 2, I was trying to figure out why The Nun isn't as scary, and I think it's due to modernity. The Conjuring 2 has am multitude of instances where the Hodgsons' domicile is interrupted by demonic energy. Lights going out, bulbs exploding, TVs not working, knives and sh*t flying around. Machines and tools we rely on for comfort and normalcy are constantly manipulated by the demon. It's a more relatable fear, and a more dangerous one, I mean there's broken glass everywhere in this movie.

Also Marquis of Snakes sounds cool as hell, very metal sobriquet Valak.

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