Good sequels are hard to come by. This is
doubly true in the horror genre, where sequels risk becoming serialised and
formulaic — but The Conjuring, released in
2013, was always a different kind of horror film. The sequel follows closely in
its footsteps, making use of strong characters and relationships to drive its
spooky story. While The Conjuring 2 doesn’t fall victim to the horror
genre’s proven inclination towards clones, the sequel feels familiar in a way
that fans of the original film will appreciate.
Warning:
spoilers within!
The film starts out strong and,
like its predecessor, begins with a case that is largely — but not entirely —
unrelated to its main focus on the Enfield poltergeist. This time around, it’s
the Amityville Horror — something fans have wanted to see studied by The
Conjuring‘s Ed and Lorraine Warren ever since the first film was
released.
While many want to see the Warren’s investigation
of Amityville as a full film, it’s extremely well timed as the intro to this
movie. Not only does it add to continuity between films (the first film ended
with a reference to “a case in Long Island”), but the Amityville hysteria that
swept the world was also a direct influence on the coverage of the later
Enfield case — with the latter being referred to as “England’s Amityville”.
After starting off with a bang
and a few good scares, The Conjuring 2 settles in for the long haul — and I
really mean long. At around two hours
and 15 minutes, The Conjuring 2 is a lengthy film — probably longer
than it needs to be, though that length is largely felt in gut-clenching
tension rather than dragging boredom.
A few whole scenes could have
easily been snipped with no real loss to the story. Most notably of these was a
trite ‘welcome to London’ montage, complete with archival footage, red buses
and The Clash’sLondon
Calling. The scene was obviously intended to introduce the new
setting, but it instead ended up at odds with The Conjuring‘s
distinctive yellow subtitling — which quite clearly gives the location and date
of the new scenes.
Once we get to England,
however, the story finds its feet and starts to plod towards the inevitable,
and it’s in these early scenes that The Conjuring 2 really sets itself apart from a lot of
horror films. The Conjuringhas always
distinguished itself as a movie that was about people as much as it was about
the ghosts, and the sequel doesn’t disappoint — in fact it’s one of the only
films I’ve seen that successfully combines horror and romance.
The Warrens are once again
skilfully played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, and their relationship is
one of the things that really brings the film’s story to life. They actually
spend a good third of the movie back in the States, with Lorraine finding
herself being stalked by an inhuman spirit that wants her husband’s life.
Over in England, Frances O’Connor’s Peggy
Hodgson is the picture of a British working class single mother, one who isn’t
depicted as being particularly brave yet still charges into the unknown again
and again for the sake of her beloved children. Unlike The
Conjuring and its
spinoff Annabelle, however, this one isn’t about the mum.
The film focuses largely on her
daughter Janet, the young girl whom the hauntings are centred around — even
when she leaves the Enfield flat. Madison Wolfe puts in a solid performance as
Janet, chronicling her torment at the hands of a cranky old man spirit and the
media — but we’ll get to that in a minute.
This isn’t just a story about a
ghost — it’s a story about a single mother with barely enough money to keep her
four children fed and clothed, with a flooded basement and broken washing
machine that’s been left for lack of money to get it fixed — or a man in the
home to help fix it. It’s a story about four children who get bullied in
school, whose closest friends are among their own family.
On the more cliché side of
things, it’s a story that starts with an Ouija board.
As the ghostly presence moves in, the
scares build slowly and the tension is created early on with nothing more than
sound design and some creative camerawork — which also serves to get the
audience acquainted with the layout of the haunted house. Where some films
would have already shoved a monster in your face, James Wan is still building
atmosphere with nothing more than a Dutch tilt and a slow pan across a dark
room.
The first half of The
Conjuring 2 is a
wonderful game of bait and switch — the movie builds up expectations and
tension, only to shatter them in the very next scene. A scare where you didn’t
expect one, or a long, silent moment where you did, Wan toys with his audience
masterfully. As evidenced by its length, this film isn’t afraid to take its
time, and that is shown in a few particularly memorable scenes.
In one, the youngest son Billy
gets up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, only to find his toy
firetruck misplaced from its usual home inside his darkened play tent (as seen
in one of the earliest trailers for The Conjuring 2). He puts
it back inside and goes back to bed — just as the firetruck wheels out of the
tent of its own accord, lights and sirens blazing. During the long silent
pauses of this scene, you can’t help but anticipate the next burst of
paranormal activity — but Wan makes you wait just long enough that you second
guess whether it’s coming at all.
This scene with the tent is
also one of a number of scenes that follows a tradition of haunted house films
— identifying the main points of ghostly activity in the house and building
expectations around those places. The tent, an old chair, one of the upper
rooms and, of course, the basement are all firmly established as being bad news
before the Warrens even step into the picture.
Also before our intrepid paranormal
investigators do arrive, the film addresses the media circus that surrounded
the Enfield haunting, and introduces the numerous real-life figures involved.
One scene even recreates an infamous interview with Janet and Margaret Hodgson,
right down to the girls’ postures as they sit on a dingy couch.
One of the most interesting
things about The Conjuring 2 is the way it addresses the air of
scepticism that surrounded both the Amityville and Enfield cases — which are
both now widely agreed to have been hoaxes. In fact, most of the information
you’ll find about Enfield online is more concerned with debunking the haunting
than it is with actually chronicling what happened.
While most horror movies
include skeptics in some way, none quite address it in the way that The
Conjuring 2 has, with
investigators and reporters often present to try and provide a more mundane
reasoning for what is happening. Even clairvoyant investigator (and true
believer) Lorraine Warren has her moments of doubt when she finds she can’t
sense any ghostly presence in the house.
This atmosphere leads to one of the
interesting explorations of character in The Conjuring 2 — that of Janet’s isolation as the
target of a large part of the paranormal activity. By the time the Warrens
arrive in England, Janet is almost unresponsive, being haunted by both a
vengeful spirit and the academics and reporters who are determined to prove her
a liar.
It’s while the Warrens are
investigating that the movie starts to meander a little. This section is filled
with great and inventive scares, but even the new ways in which the haunted
Janet is tormented by the spirit of old man Bill start to feel repetitive when
the result is always the same.
While tension is often built in
new and interesting ways, James Wan has a tendency to return to one particular
type of scare — the creepy face popping out of the shadows, something you may
have also seen in Insidious, or to a lesser extent in The
Conjuring. This film features no less than three different creepy
faces, which all pop out at you multiple times at opportune moments. While it
can feel repetitive, the effect is undeniable.
Wan is a known fan of practical
effects, and the makeup design for each of the scary entities is spot on —
utilising the uncanny valley effect by taking a human face and making it
inhuman enough to be unsettling. The faces from The
Conjuring 2 are one
of the first things to have kept me up at night for some time.
After the scare-filled nights of The
Conjuring 2 pass, the
days are depicted as surprisingly pleasant — but those familiar with The
Conjuring will
recognise this as the calm before the storm. As much as they’re there to
investigate a haunting, the Warrens also take it upon themselves to provide
some much needed stability. Ed takes on the role of handyman, giving the
plumbing and appliances some TLC that’s been much needed since Peggy’s husband
left them. Lorraine is as patient and gentle as always, calming both a frazzled
Peggy and her children.
Of course, the fun and laughter
of the idyllic family scenes created by Ed and Lorraine’s presence (including
an extended singalong to Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love”) can only mean
one thing — the shit’s about to hit the fan.
From here The
Conjuring 2 barrels
through into its last act with gusto. The eventual denouement almost seems
rushed, which is odd in a movie that stretches to a bloated two and a quarter
hours, but the film gets its satisfying conclusion in the end.
Some of the morals pushed towards the end
of the film are considerably heavy-handed, and a moment between Janet and the
Warrens is almost too mushy even considering the overall humanity of The
Conjuring 2, but at its core it is a film that manages to be more
than just a two-hour-long frightfest.
The Conjuring 2 is a film that’s worthy of its predecessor,
endeavouring to be even scarier than the original, while still retaining that
focus on the characters that drive it. While it could do with being a little
shorter, it’s a horror film that will restore some of your faith in humanity —
and still keep you up at night.
QUESTIONING THE STORY
When did the Enfield haunting begin?
The Conjuring 2 true story reveals
that according to the mother, Peggy Hodgson, the haunting of her Enfield home
began on the evening of August 30, 1977. It was on that night that her daughter
Janet told her that her brothers' beds were wobbling. The next evening, Mrs.
Hodgson heard a loud noise from upstairs. She entered her children's bedroom
and saw a chest of drawers moving. She tried to stop the heavy oak chest as it
moved toward the door, concluding that an invisible force was trying to trap
them in the room.
"It started in a back bedroom, the chest of drawers moved, and you could
hear shuffling," recalled the real Janet Hodgson many years later in a
Channel 4 Enfield Poltergeist documentary. Thinking that it was Janet and her
siblings making the noise, she said that her mother told them to go to sleep.
"We told her what was going on, and she came to see it for herself. She
saw the chest of drawers moving. When she tried to push it back, she
couldn't."
Did they hear a strange knocking
coming from the walls?
Yes. The knocking would fade in and
out as it ran down the wall, supposedly frightening the family so much that
they all slept in the same room with the light on. Vic Nottingham, a neighbor,
claims that when he went into the home to investigate at the family's request,
he heard a knocking on the wall and on the ceiling, leaving him somewhat
frightened. The knocking can be heard during thisJanet Hodgson interview that was conducted in the home.
Did dozens
of crosses turn upside down?
No. In fact-checking The
Conjuring 2 by comparing it to the real Enfield Poltergeist case, we
found no evidence that crosses turned upside down on the walls of the Hodgson
home. In fact, the upside down cross has not traditionally been a symbol of
evil. It is the Cross of St. Peter, who was crucified upside down because he
felt that he was not worthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus.
Did the
mother, Peggy, go to the neighbor's house for help?
Yes. While exploring The
Conjuring 2 true story, we learned that single mother Peggy Hodgson
took the family next door and pleaded for help. The neighbors, Vic and Peggy
Nottingham, offered to go into the home to investigate. "I went in there
and I couldn't make out these noises — there was a knocking on the wall, in the
bedroom, on the ceiling," said Vic. "I was beginning to get a bit
frightened."
Did Janet
Hodgson really levitate?
In The Conjuring 2 movie,
Peggy's daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe) rises high in the air and finds herself
pinned against the ceiling. This is a complete exaggeration of what allegedly
happened in real life during the Enfield haunting. Photographs of the real
Janet Hodgson "levitating" only show her a short distance above her
bed (see below). This, coupled with the way her body is positioned in the air,
has led many people to believe that she simply jumped from her bed. The
questionable photos were taken by Daily Mirror photographer
Graham Morris after the family contacted the press (it should be noted that the Daily
Mirror is a UK tabloid newspaper whose stories have often proven less
than credible). "The levitation was scary," recalled Janet,
"because you didn't know where you were going to land."
Supporting the family's claims were two witnesses, a baker and a lollipop lady,
who were passing by outside and claimed to have seen Janet hovering above her
bed as they looked through an upstairs window. "The lady saw me spinning
around and banging against the window," recalls Janet. "I thought I
might actually break the window and go through it."
Did
demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren really investigate the Enfield Poltergeist
case?
Yes, but to a far lesser
degree than portrayed in the movie, which is somewhat misleadingly billed as
being "based on the true case files of the Warrens." Paranormal
researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren briefly investigated the Enfield Poltergeist
in the summer of 1978 and were just two of the many investigators to visit the
Hodgson's North London home on Green Street. Most articles about the Enfield
Poltergeist case don't even mention the Warrens, leading one to conclude that
their role in the case was significantly dramatized for The Conjuring 2.
In fact, Guy Lyon Playfair, one of the original paranormal investigators on the
Enfield Poltergeist case, came forward prior to the movie's release and said
that the Warrens had showed up "uninvited" and only stayed for a day.
He also said that Ed Warren told him he could make him a lot of money off the
case (Darkness Radio).
Ed Warren touched on the case and its skeptics in Gerald Brittle's book The Demonologist, stating,
"...inhuman spirit phenomena were in progress. Now, you couldn't record
the dangerous, threatening atmosphere inside that little house. But you could
film the levitations, teleportations, and dematerialisations of people and
objects that were happening there - not to mention the many hundreds of hours
of tape recordings made of these spirit voices speaking out loud in the
rooms." As the case became widely viewed as a hoax, some saw it as proof
that the Warrens themselves were frauds.
Was
11-year-old Janet Hodgson really possessed by a dead man named Bill Wilkins?
While fact-checking The
Conjuring 2, we discovered that this part of the movie was to some degree
inspired by audio
tapes of the real Janet Hodgson. In the recordings, she can be heard
conveying a message via an eerie voice, which is supposedly that of Bill
Wilkins, a man who had died in the living room of the house several years
earlier. "Just before I died, I went blind," said the voice,
"and then I had a hemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in
the corner downstairs."
An interview
with Janet Hodgson at the time suggests that the idea of
talking in a possessed voice may have been encouraged and planted in Janet's
mind by paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse. When asked when the voices
started, Janet said that one night Maurice Grosse told them, "All we need
now is the voices to talk." Almost immediately following this suggestion,
they did (the voices had mainly growled, barked and made similar noises prior
to this).
"I felt used by a force that nobody understands," the real Janet
Hodgson told the UK's Channel 4 years later. "I really don't like to think
about it too much. I'm not sure the poltergeist was truly 'evil'. It was almost
as if it wanted to be part of our family. It didn't want to hurt us. It had
died there and wanted to be at rest. The only way it could communicate was
through me and my sister."
Did the
man who allegedly possessed Janet die in the downstairs living room years
earlier?
Yes. In exploring the
Enfield haunting, we learned that Bill Wilkins' son Terry confirmed that he had
died in a manner similar to what Janet described when she was possessed
(Wilkins had passed away in an armchair downstairs after suffering a brain
hemorrhage)
Did the
paranormal activity begin after they played with a Ouija board?
Yes, at least according to
the real Janet Hodgson, who says that she and her sister Margaret played with a
Ouija board just prior to the start of the supernatural activity. -Daily
Mail Online
How many
children did the real Peggy Hodgson have?
In researching the Enfield
Poltergeist true story, we learned that, like in The Conjuring 2 movie,
the real Peggy Hodgson was a single mother with four children, Margaret, 12,
Janet, 11, Johnny, 10, and Billy, 7.
Were Janet
and her siblings bullied at school?
Yes, and according to
Janet, the other kids called her "Ghost Girl" and put crane flies
down her back. Her brother was tormented in similar ways. -Daily Mail
Online
Did
furniture really move?
Perhaps the most credible
claim of furniture moving in the Hodgson home at 284 Green Street involved a
policewoman, WPC
Carolyn Heeps (pictured below), who signed an affidavit to the
effect that she had witnessed an armchair levitate approximately half an inch
and move close to four feet across the floor. In all, there were more than 30
witnesses to similar strange incidents in the home. In addition to furniture
moving, they had supposedly witnessed objects flying around, cold breezes,
physical assaults, pools of water appearing on the floor, graffiti, and perhaps
most incredibly, matches spontaneously igniting.
Did the
police do anything to help?
No. During our
investigation into the real story behind the Enfield Poltergeist haunting, we
learned that despite a female police officer witnessing a chair move, the
police left after determining that it wasn't a police matter since no one was
breaking the law. -Daily Mail Online
What
caused the Enfield Poltergeist events to quiet down?
The real Janet Hodgson
believes that it was a priest's 1978 visit to the family's Enfield home in
North London that caused the haunting to calm down (not the Warrens), though
the occurrences did not end completely. Peggy still heard noises in the house
from time to time, and Janet's younger brother Billy, who lived there until his
mother passed, remarked that you always felt like you were being watched.
Is it
possible that the whole thing was a hoax?
Yes. Two experts from the
Society for Psychical Research (SPR) caught the children bending spoons
themselves. They also found it strange why no one was allowed in the room when
Janet was talking in her possessed voice, which was supposedly that of Bill
Wilkins (among others). Janet herself admitted that some of the Enfield
haunting events were fabricated. In 1980, she told ITV News, "Oh yeah,
once or twice (we faked things), just to see if Mr. Grosse and Mr. Playfair
would catch us. They always did." In an article that was published in the
year before the release of The Conjuring 2, Janet said that roughly
two percent of the paranormal activity in their Green Street home had been
faked. -Daily Mail Online
During a Margaret
and Janet Hodgson interview that aired as part of a TV special
in 1980, Janet is asked how it feels to be haunted by a poltergeist. "It's
not haunted," Janet replies smiling. Her sister smiles in astonishment, as
if Janet just gave up a secret, and whispers, "Shut up!" through
muted giggles. Janet later said she didn't feel that the poltergeist was evil,
meaning that the house wasn't necessarily "haunted."
Like the Enfield Poltergeist story, a slew of similar accounts emerged in the
years following the 1973 release of The Exorcist. Some argue that
the film gave birth to a culture of paranormal hoaxes carried out by those
seeking money and fame. Others believe that the William Friedkin film allowed
impressionable minds to become easily influenced by its demonic plot. In any
case, similar alleged true stories emerged, such as the ones chronicled in The
Amityville Horror, The
Exorcism of Emily Rose, the original Conjuring,
and its spin-off Annabelle.
What
happened to the Hodgson family after the paranormal activity subsided?
When the Enfield
Poltergeist events subsided and the press attention faded, the family faced
various challenges. Janet married young after leaving home at age 16. Her
younger brother Johnny died of cancer at age 14. The family's claims of
something paranormal being present in the house lasted all the way up until
Peggy's death, at which time Janet's brother Billy moved out of the home.
Janet, who will be 46 at the time of The Conjuring 2's release in
2016, lost a child herself, a son who died in his sleep at 18. She says that
she didn't want to resurrect the painful memories of the Enfield Poltergeist
events when her mother was alive, but that she is now ready to tell her story.
why is the demon Valak shown as a nun and aren't
nuns good people and devotees of Jesus?
The demon valak is real and is mentioned in many
ancient texts as an angel on a two headed dragon and is known to be the
president of hell.
Some good people turn evil.
Take the example of satan who was the highest of all
the angels but wasn't happy and wanted to replace god. So, just like him maybe
a nun (valak,as portrayed in the movie) turned bad and became a part of hell.
Things wants everybody to know about valak
1. Valak is really a small boy with angel wings
In demonology, he was regarded as the Great President of Hell. He is a boy who rides in a two-headed dragon and a commander of 30 legions of demons. Live Sci-fi believes the demon in “The Conjuring 2” has a closer resemblance to Beelzebub, the demon of lies. Director James Wan admitted the design of the demon character was one thing he was not quite sure of.
2. He is a subject of many historical texts
He is one of the 72 demons in the “Lesser Key of Solomon,” a spell book on demonology. It was compiled as early as 17th century.
3. Valak wanted to kill Ed Warren
It is because he is opposing his intentions to kill Janet. So what’s with Janet that the demon wants her? There are claims that the real Janet is a gifted ventriloquism or the power to manipulate voices and she admitted faking some events. In an interview with
The Telegraph, Janet Hodgson Winter revealed that around two percent of the haunting was phony.
4. He was in Ed and Lorraine’s house but he’s got nothing to do there
In fact, that entity is everywhere. He’s at home at Amityville, and in Enfield. He was in the painting, because Ed said he saw him in a dream. Lorraine said it was the same demonic nun in her vision. But aside from the painting, he was behind them in the kitchen. His name was also shown in the name of the bracelets that their daughter Judy is making. But Wan explained to io9 that the nun has got nothing to with Amityville. “She’s just having a psychic premonition,” he said about Lorraine seeing the nun at their home.
5. He can give true answers about hidden treasures. Mark Rogers wrote in his “The Esoteric Codex: Demonology I” that Valak reveals where serpents can be seen and delivers them harmless to the magician.
