3 stars (out of 5)
Co-writer/co-producer/director James Wan’s original The Conjuring three years ago was a pretty spooky ‘true’ supernatural saga graced by strong playing and some nasty scares, and this follow-up is very nearly as good, even if it plays Hell with the ‘facts’.
Famous/infamous American paranormal investigators Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) are introduced checking out the much-discredited ‘Amityville Horror’ in the mid-‘70s (the events of the first film took place in 1971), and Lorraine is so drained by the freakiness of the opening sequence she must take time off to get over it all. We then cut to the London of 1977 (and hear The Clash’s London Calling, which was actually released in 1979 – oops!), and take up in the suburb of Enfield where single Mum Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) lives in a grungy old house with her four plucky kids.
Naturally the Hodgsons start experiencing strange events: second child Janet (Madison Wolfe) seems to be sleepwalking and having arguments in with an Exorcist-like voice; a zoetrope and toy fire engine operate on their own; the TV keeps mysteriously changing channels (from The Goodies to Margaret Thatcher speeches!!!); and the ghost of an evil old pensioner might be lurking. Soon the police and the Catholics are involved, the Warrens are summoned to find out what’s going on and whether they can help, and Lorraine is rather glad for the distraction as she’s being haunted by a fanged phantom nun, who’s quite alarming despite being damn silly.
Farmiga, Wilson, O’Connor, Simon McBurney (as Maurice Grosse, another true-life supernatural studier) and Wolfe all deliver understated performances that assist in making this seem considerably more frightening (and less preposterous) than it actually is, although Wan and his co-writers go overboard in more than one sequence (the wacky dog-transformation is particularly unnecessary). And there’s no serious psychological complexity (and none of the later theories that Peggy made it up for the publicity, Janet was complicit as she craved attention, and possibly Grosse had an unsavoury interest in the girl), as these spirits and dark forces are just simply real and you should be terrified. And, um… eeeeeek?
I Wake Up Screening 