The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Directed by James Wan
Lorraine and Ed Warren travel to north London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by malicious spirits.
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33 films that influenced The Conjuring 2
What critics say influenced The Conjuring 2
BOTTOM LINE Another year, another mix of “The Amityville Horror” and “The Exorcist.”
Toys begin to spring to life, too: There’s a scene with a toy fire truck that could have been snipped from about 100 other “haunted child” flicks, including the far superior and iconic “The Exorcist.”
And then, of course, there’s that timeless old chestnut, demonic possession, a theme a great many moviegoers take deadly seriously, though you’d think that a lavish attempt to replay “The Exorcist” again, 43 years later, might start to seem a little old hat.
En la primera parte de esta saga (¿vendrá una tercera?, yo apostaría que si) el director James Wan coleccionaba algunos de los trucos más viejos del género para aplicarlos con gracia y hasta cierta maestría, pero para esta nueva entrega se nota el agotamiento de la fórmula (si aquella robaba a Poltergeist, ésta roba a The Exorcist, a Nightmare on Elm Street y a sí misma), lo cual compensa con dosis -a veces calculadas, a veces involuntarias- de humor.
Young American actress Madison Wolfe turns in the finest child performance in a horror film since Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”
His specialty is the tracking shot, with the camera whooshing forward, the way it did in “The Shining,” only Wan, in “The Conjuring 2,” sends it rushing through creaky floorboard hallways and cramped bedrooms, which are made to seem much larger because the images are so alive they’re almost vibrating.
The film overall is a reasonably basic possession/haunted house movie with its roots in The Exorcist (1973) and Poltergeist (1982) — with a few nods to The Sentinel (1977), The Shining (1980) and The Babadook (2014).
Truth be told, it's probably no coincidence that his latest vehicle, set in the late-'70s, might drive home visions of such similar-era, horror-genre gems as "The Exorcist," "Poltergeist" and even "The Shining."
Tenemos la casa de campaña bajo techo como refugio ominoso de un niño que tan bien utilizó Shyamalan en Sixth Sense; tenemos el juego de espejos que está presente en casi todas las películas de terror comercial de los últimos tiempos; así como el juego de un niño que lanza una pelota (aquí, un camión de bomberos) a un lugar oscuro que se la regresa inexplicablemente; tenemos las manos terroríficas de un espectro que atraviesan la materia sólida para manifestarse como en The Ring; tenemos una rarísima escena con el llamado Crooked Man que trata de robarse, descaradamente, la estética infantil y maravillosa de The Babadook; tenemos el columpio agitándose que hizo famoso Sam Reimi en Evil Dead para señalar la presencia de los espíritus; y tenemos, por supuesto, todos los clichés del tropo del exorcismo con cosas que vuelan, niños que vuelan, mesas y cubrechimeneas que vuelan, voces diabólicas y las conjuras al demonio que terminan, alegremente, por la mención de su nombre.
Children's toys coming alive, furniture moving, a young girl speaking in a demonic growl, bumps and thuds, and even a figure shamelessly stolen from The Babadook — The Conjuring 2 is a compendium of clichés.
The film overall is a reasonably basic possession/haunted house movie with its roots in The Exorcist (1973) and Poltergeist (1982) — with a few nods to The Sentinel (1977), The Shining (1980) and The Babadook (2014).
Wan works instead with a degree of precision that makes the most of the most commonplace devices; it’s difficult to imagine another contemporary director who could have gotten such mileage out of a toy truck that turns itself on or a zoetrope whose crooked little man turns real (an effect a mite reminiscent of “The Babadook”).
Working with ace cinematographer Don Burgess (a regular collaborator of Robert Zemeckis on everything from “ Forrest Gump ,” for which he won an Oscar, to “ Flight ”), Wan and his team have an incredible ability to produce fear with camera tricks and forced perspective.
“The Conjuring 2” reaches its apex when Wan and cinematographer Don Burgess (“Spider-Man,” “Forrest Gump”) patiently manipulate elements of the Enfield Haunting incident into wide-screen terror.
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The film overall is a reasonably basic possession/haunted house movie with its roots in The Exorcist (1973) and Poltergeist (1982) — with a few nods to The Sentinel (1977), The Shining (1980) and The Babadook (2014).
Los Warren se han hecho incluso más conocidos gracias al caso de Amityville (véase el clásico de 1979, “The Amityville Horror”), pero muchos todavía dudan de su veracidad.
A postmodern American Gothic bouillabaisse, The Conjuring 2 opens with what seems to be a sequel to The Amityville Horror, with the Warrens investigating the house made famous by a half-dozen films, including Stuart Rosenberg's 1979 classic.
When it comes to horrors and chillers, the general rule of thumb/bum is that, with some notable exceptions - Evil Dead II, Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), whatever you're having yourself - the sequel isn't as good as the original.
As years pass, and time forgets those less fortunate genre duds, The Conjuring 2 will continue to be mentioned in the same breath as Evil Dead II , Dawn Of The Dead and Aliens when fans debate their favorite – aka the greatest – horror sequels ever.
Critics generally overlooked that it ripped off three of the most rehashed horror titles in history — “The Exorcist,” “The Amityville Horror” and “Poltergeist” — and instead praised the above-average acting and skillful scare tactics.
En la primera parte de esta saga (¿vendrá una tercera?, yo apostaría que si) el director James Wan coleccionaba algunos de los trucos más viejos del género para aplicarlos con gracia y hasta cierta maestría, pero para esta nueva entrega se nota el agotamiento de la fórmula (si aquella robaba a Poltergeist, ésta roba a The Exorcist, a Nightmare on Elm Street y a sí misma), lo cual compensa con dosis -a veces calculadas, a veces involuntarias- de humor.
Set in a gloomy North London council house in 1977, “The Conjuring 2” is a work of British kitchen-sink realism in the guise of a supernatural thriller: Call it Ken Loach’s “Poltergeist,” or perhaps “The Exorcist” as imagined by a young Mike Leigh.
Oh, the first movie stole mostly from "Poltergeist"; this one prefers "The Exorcist."
James Wan’s 2013 hit The Conjuring was a pretty successful blend of haunted-house ghost story and demonic-possession horror, part Poltergeist, part The Exorcist, relying more on suspense and creepy dread than jump scares and disturbing images.
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It’s a much subtler descent into the weird than the first film, which was burdened by a surfeit of hoary horror show tropes, among them slamming doors, shock cuts, and “gotchas” – graveyard gimcrackery that was old hat even when Wise used plenty of it in that great American haunted house story, The Haunting.
Then again, director James Wan is skilled at making people suffer, having kickstarted the torture-porn craze with Saw .
Director James Wan – who broke through with 2004’s Saw , and honed his craft on Insidious and The Conjuring – sets this rain-soaked thriller mainly in London, 1977.
Wan may be decades removed from his “Saw” stardom, but he still lets splashes of morbid wit make their way in — cops, seeing a chair slide around a corner, across the floor and into place at a dinner table, mutter, “Well, there’s nothing we can do about THAT.”
A horror sequel is rarely original, but in the hands of scare-meister James Wan, who mainstreamed torture-porn with the Saw franchise before turning to old-school, slow-burn spook stories, it can at least be eerily effective.
James Wan (“Saw” and “Insidious”) is a terrific director, and he certainly conjures (couldn’t help it) some “Boo!” moments here.
The 39-year-old directed or co-directed the groundbreaking “Saw,” both “Insidious” movies and the superb and outstanding “The Conjuring.”