Review of The Conjuring 2 (2016) by Nathan R — 25 Sep 2017

Both Conjuring movies are like a friend telling you about how ghosts are totes real, although he's the only one who can see them, and the reason why you can't is because you don't believe hard enough. If you try to interrogate him on this supposed knowledge of ghosts, he will will only follow up with the statement, "you don't understand. If ghosts aren't real, how did THIS happen, huh?!" Then you realize that your stoner friend represents almost 50% of Americans and you die a little inside.

The Conjuring 2 is no different from the first Conjuring. And I mean in every way. It starts out the same way, featuring Ed and Lorraine Warren, who in real life are conning scam artists preaching Christian hogwash and pretending to have superhero ghost-finding powers, being summoned to a "case" of a haunting that they can involve themselves in and hopefully get some media attention for it. You see, these propagandist films are based on "true stories," and while I appreciate the attempt to get any doubters to see this movie, it only made my doubts stronger when Ed basically challenged an acclaimed doctor to fight him on TV, dudebro style.

The Conjuring 2 is based on events where an attention-seeking family created a hoax, since back then, they didn't have smartphones or Playstations, so they had to make their own fun somehow. And what's better than a story where you're the victim of something horrible? Not only are you famous, everyone feels sorry for you. Because they have a photo of a girl jumping wildly off of her own bed and have a recording of her voice acting, this means they were haunted, and if you were stupid enough, you instantly believed it. You also enjoyed this movie. The Exorcist had just come out in 1974 in the UK. I WONDER what influenced the girls to start this in 1977.

I'm not sure what I expected from Conjuring 2, but I didn't expect to laugh through most of it. I didn't like the first movie at all, but I thought this one might have been better and decided to give it a chance. I believe the only part I actually felt creeped out by was the scene with the painting, if only because it was the only scene in the film that was subtle and not screaming in your face. The rest of it was your typical "demon possesses little girl" story that we've seen a million times over-- as I'm sure the pranksters have also seen.