Review of The Conjuring 2 (2016) by Hunter W — 14 Jan 2017

In the area of remakes and retreads, and hitting horror franchises into the ground once they have gone through the roof with the original like James Wan's original series Saw did in the early Aughts, he is back to maintain control and direction for this second installment of the Conjuring series that is riffing off of the Amityville hauntings back in the far away times of the seventies.

Following up a year later with Patrick Wilson's and Vera Farmiga's team of exorcism ghostbusters as it were, Vera receives a premonition that Patrick may be killed on a future case involving the Nun spectre that they encountered on their last assignment and maybe they should hide low for a while from investigating or at least taking on any new cases.

And of course they do receive one from across the pond in London that seems to portray similar characteristics from the Amityville spectres of a year ago. The tone of course circles around the same feel and characteristics of the original with the jump scares and atmosphere from that era of filmmaking which I usually prefer when it comes to horror films, and they again perfectly capture the look as well.

And the spectre design seems to be harkening a bit to the Grudge spectres of the early aughts and look decent enough, but the only real addition to the proceedings is location and the potential threat against one of the two leads from the jump and that appears to be it.

Overall in terms of quality against its contemporary genre films it is far from bad, but it doesnt add anything particularly new to the formula as well while avoiding simple excess as well. Outside of Furious 7 which Wan handled perfectly, it will be great to see him do some more films outside of his comfort zone of horror which might be the upcoming Aquaman provided the WB doesn't interefere too much.

Standard if unoriginal.