When I was a kid the art of telling stories around a campfire use to be a thing. With technology consuming our time nowadays I assume those same stories are told with an I Pad as the center light. Regardless of the backdrop the stars of the stories are the same, ghost always add a little fright to the evening. Ed and Lorraine Warren have supplied many stories to the lore that is, ghostly tales, with more than a few of them making their way to the movie screen. While their most famous story involves a house in Amityville, N.Y., it was “The Conjuring” that put them in their stories. Three years later, and so many more stories to tell, the Warren’s are back, and they ain’t afraid of no ghost.
While not so much as being the “Ghostbusters” of their day, more like agents of the Church, who investigate the truths to the supernatural claims of stories that come their way. The majority of those involving the haunting of a council house in Enfield, North London, and the family that lives there. Janet Hodgson (Madison Wolfe) is a pretty normal girl, but soon she starts to hear the voice of an old man claiming she is in his house. Not like those famous words uttered in “Amityville”, “Get Out!” this man does not want Janet and her family there. After enough things happen, The Church enlists the help of the Warrens to check out the authenticity of the Hodgson’s story. While there, they lay witness to things that go bump in the night as well as who might be behind the Hodgson’s nightmare.
The Warren stories are all pretty amazing, and like the first film, the filmmakers go to great lengths to recreate as much of the environment as they can. Teamed with an army of writers, director James Wan returns to bring his story telling techniques with him. Wan has a way with the camera, his shots make everything seem a little creepier than they actually are. With Wan back behind the driver’s seat the film already has the upper hand on quality, the only question can everything else keep up? While the story is good, it does suffer from being too long, with a lot of nothing happening between key story points. Having had release dates bumped, it does not bring the usual bad news that comes along with that, even going for the “R” rating instead of the safe “PG-13.” Once you get past the length of the movie, Wan keeps it at a good and enjoyable level, that makes feel as well as the first go around. The horror genre has many avenues for its stories to take to get to the point where we get to see them. Often the studio films are more jump scares than actually anything that’s going to give you nightmares, something a good horror movie should do. Bravo to the filmmakers for pushing for a story that pushes back, and while “The Conjuring 2” isn’t perfect, the people behind it have conjured something that might not help you sleep afterwards.