Yessir, we're in Amityville, New York, and Wan and company have decided the best opening gesture for their film is to reiterate the stuff and nonsense of The Amityville Horror, a story that has been subject to all the cinematic abuse it can withstand, I should have to think. Right at the very start, in fact, there's a shot inside the attic room of a house with a distinctive gambrel roof, and extremely distinctive half-moon windows. You wouldn't necessarily expect that from the start, when the film makes its most dubious choice: we reacquaint ourselves with the Warrens, many years after the end of The Conjuring, as they're investigating the alleged haunting that would catapult them to national prominence. They are full of the usual bump 'n jump nonsense of every ghost movie since time immemorial, but they have the audacity to anchor the typical gamut of haunted house clichés in genuinely involving character drama, executed by legitimately talented actors. Also, the fact that word like 'story' and 'character' can be tossed around blithely in regards to a horror sequel about a poltergeist is by itself enough to demonstrate that there is something awfully special about these Conjuring pictures. At least, it tells a richer story that uses its characters to better effect. It is not, I think, as scary as The Conjuring, and it's certainly not as clean (the screenplay, by Carey Hayes & Chad Hayes & James Wan - also the director - and David Johnson, is indulgent in exactly the ways that happen when a filmmaking team is given all the leeway in the world based on their last success, and so can afford to be undisciplined), but it might actually be better than its predecessor. It's in no small part for this exact reason that The Conjuring 2 proves to be such a damned good sequel.

One of those is that the film doesn't need to try so hard: it can just be a nice little self-contained object that's perfectly enjoyable on its own right, and hopefully it doesn't simply re-create the entire content of the first film over again. It's a tactic that used to simply be the way sequels got done, and is somewhat out of fashion these days, but it has its advantages. It just takes the same heroes, married paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga), and sets them loose on another adventure. It doesn't retroactively turn The Conjuring into the first movement of a long-form narrative it doesn't really mention the events of The Conjuring at all, outside of a couple quick visual allusions. The Conjuring 2 is a proper old-school sequel.

The conjuring 2 2016 full movie english