The Conjuring 2: Not for the Faint of Heart

Went ghost for a little while but now I'm back. What am I reviewing, you may be asking yourself (if you're bad at noticing titles)? Will it be the latest Avengers movie? Will it be a low-key indie film? Will it be Warcraft?!

Nay.

We're going to be discussing The Conjuring's amazing second installment, otherwise known as (wait for it)....The Conjuring 2.

Honestly, how they come up with these names for sequels

 I will never have any idea.

Let's get down to the plot: Ed and Lorraine Warren (graciously played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are back slaying evil in this amazing sequel to The Conjuring. After gaining some insight into Lorraine's personal demons (like, literally) at the beginning of the movie, we're whisked away to London, where a family is experiencing some disturbances in their home. Young Janet, eleven years old, thinks she's being tormented by an evil spirit with a sinister agenda. It throws her from her bed, trashes her family's house, and frequently uses her as a host through which to speak. After the church gets wind of the disturbances, they send Ed and Lorraine out to London to assess the situation and see if the claims have any depth. It's then up to them to tell whether the whole thing is a hoax or whether they're putting themselves in extreme danger.

The fantastic thing about this sequel is (despite it's horrendous title) its originality and how it plays with your head -- and this is why James Wan is a goddamn horror master. You enter the theater expecting a straightforward scary story: there's a definite evil presence, you have a sympathetic view of the main character, and then the presence either wins or is vanquished. But the movie takes it a little further than that. This movie is a bit long, setting itself up (most horror movies run about an hour and a half -- this one is two and a quarter), but it weaves an intricate question throughout itself: "Is this girl actually possessed?" The audience's trust of the Warrens and their doubt in the girl's situation make you legitimately wonder despite the overwhelming evidence. But it's the ending that really pays off here, explaining everything. This movie's also a great example of how directors can get creative with the paranormal and make up their own rules.

Moving onto the most important part of any horror movie: was it actually scary?

Honestly, this movie was way scarier than I had anticipated. And thank god I saw this in a theater of like-minded scaredy cats and we all screamed in unison.

How do you outdo an evil, 16th-century witch? 

Oh, just make a demonic nun, totally cool.

So often horror sequels (and even originals) rely on a series of repetitive pop-ups to frighten you, and the effect turns cheesy -- especially with a subpar cast. But in The Conjuring 2, the characters aren't stupid, and the forms that the spirit takes are really frighteningly and surprisingly diverse. This is another way that Wan really stirs up some amazing horror: The "monster" is never redundant. Fear is based on the unknown, and he does a brilliant job of letting evil be unpredictable. Is it in the house? Is it outside? Is it possessing the girl again? Is it walking around on its own? Is it an old man? A nun? The crooked man?

(Spoiler alert: I screamed embarrassingly loud whenever the crooked man showed up. 

Prepare yourself.)

Really, I can't divulge too much without giving everything away, but suffice it to say that this is one sequel that is done incredibly well. The suspense sustains itself, the questions keep on popping up, and the acting is great. Wan knows what scares people, and he creates movies that get under your skin, creating an atmosphere where everything is unpredictably terrifying.

9 outa 10. Excellent classic horror movie.

Omg, even this trailer tho...

Annabelle: Possessed Doll Disappoints in Latest Horror Movie Let-Down

For some reason the association that the movie has with The Conjuring was enough to draw me in for this one. It's hard to find a well-made horror movie these days, and this actually looked intriguing -- especially building off of the character of Annabelle from The Conjuring, which was damn scary. But, after walking out of the theater, it became clear that this was just a regular movie about a possessed doll, and the fact that it was associated with The Conjuring was mere coincidence. $18 later.

Disregard "The Conjuring" part.

Annabelle begins in the California suburbs with a young couple who are about to have a baby. Mia and John are as happy as can be -- until two cultists come along and murder their neighbors and try to stab Mia in the stomach. In the haze following this hubbub, one of the serial killers shuts herself in their baby's soon-to-be nursery and kills herself while holdling the Annabelle doll. After the couple returns to the house, weird things (of course) start happening. When a minor fire forces Mia into labor, the baby is born and things are looking up when they move to a new home. But the weird things aren't stopping, and they're getting more serious. Can Mia save the life of her baby before it's too late?

I dunno, probs.

So. Okay. As previously stated, I had high hopes for this one. It's not that Annabelle is bad, it just tends towards other mediocre horror movies more than I would like. For example, things getting really blurry about what/who is actually possessing the doll. Is it the serial killer? Is it a demon? Is the serial killer now a demon? Why does the serial killer keep showing up? Where'd she go? Who's this new demon guy you're showing us? What's going on? As stupid as it seems to pick apart the logistics of a supernatural movie -- come on. Either simplify your plot or make the complicated-ness airtight so that people later can go over it and figure it out, instead of going over it and thinking "wait...what?"

The main characters were also disappointing. While Annabelle Wallis (hilariously, this is the actual name of the actress that plays Mia) holds her own pretty well, her scenes with John read pretty stiff. For a young, married couple in love, they have almost zero chemistry. And John also fulfills that age-old, B-horror movie role of guy-who-thinks-everything-is-fine-and-his-wife's-crazy to an annoying degree.

"Everything is fine, my wife is just hysterical. Let's give her 

a tranquilizer. It's the 60s."

(Parenthetically, Annabelle Wallis also looks and talks a LOT like Dianna Agron, and I spent half the film trying to figure out whether it was actually her or not.)

But the film's not ALL bad.

For one, it's interesting to see another horror movie that plays itself out in the past. Set in the 1960s, Annabelle has some amazing sets that really suck you in. I don't know if it's the similarities between Annabelle and Rosemary's Baby but the dilapidated apartment building that they move into seems appropriately creepy. Not bad.

Also, I'd be lying if I said I didn't jump out of my skin a fair amount of times. This isn't the kind of movie that's going to leave you deeply unsettled, but it is successful in delivering a number of jumps and screams. While I'm very much against the fact that they decided to "show the monster demon," I ended up jumping out of my seat (against my will) every time he showed up. However, I do think that they could've picked some scarier effects to their advantage. Like simply having the doll possessed by a serial killer a-la Chucky and leaving the demon bit out of it. Or even something as simple as making the doll itself move a little bit more; isn't that fundamentally what makes Annabelle so creepy in the first place??

You have this creepy doll!! At least make it move its head or something!!!

5 outa 10. All said, it's not bad. But if you go in expecting a film as polished as The Conjuring, you're going to be disappointed.

(Disclaimer: Most of the scary bits are in this trailer)

Insidious Chapter 2: Because Apparently the First One was Chapter 1

In preparation for the newest Insidious movie, Nick and I turned on the first one as a refresher before our 10:40 screening of the sequel. Now, the first time I saw Insidious, I had been warned that it was some really freakin' scary stuff. And I got really scared. And it may have colored the movie for me. Maybe a little bit. But the thing that I like about this franchise (as, let's be honest, it will probably become after breaking the box office this weekend) is the element of the unknown. That being said, I think that the newest one is a little more conventionally scary than the last one was. But we'll get to that later.

YE BE WARNED: SINCE THIS MOVIE IS ENTIRELY BUILT ON THE FIRST INSTALLMENT, THERE WILL BE INSIDIOUS SPOILERS ALL OVER THIS THING. IT HAS BEEN SAID.

First off, plot:

The second film starts off right where the first one left off. That is, right after Elyse has been murdered. They even give you a convenient little recap of all of the events that happen in the last scene of the first one. So you see, once again, the wife looking, horrified, at the camera and finding Elyse dead. But after being questioned by the police, things seem to go pretty much back to normal for the family. For, like, a day. After both Renai and Lorraine start seeing entities in the house again, questions start to arise about Josh's personality. Is he being dismissive because he wants to move on? Or is there something in him that has a more INSIDIOUS agenda? (See what I did there?) After her suspicions are enforced by her worried son, Dalton, who can also sense that something is wrong with his father, they join forces with Lorraine, Elyse's team from the original film, and a new character named  to get to the bottom of what is haunting Josh and, more importantly, how they can stop it.

You ain't my daddy!

This movie was pretty scary. I was afraid to open doors when I got home because of all the freakin' jumps and random spirits that keep popping up everywhere. The cool thing about Insidious 2, is that you're already a little primed for the action that you're going to get because of the first movie. But don't get me wrong, there are a lot of twists and turns in this one that the original doesn't have. For instance, instead of "it's not your house that's haunted, it's your son," as the big shocker, there are a dozen little things that are going on in this one that almost make it seem more "thriller" than the first film felt. While there is undeniably something wrong with Josh, it takes almost the entire film to sort out the fine details and try to solve the problem.

"Are you really Josh? You can tell me. I promise I won't say anything."

Insidious 2 was, on the whole, pretty good. The only complaint that I would have is the ghosts. With the slight genre change, there also seems to be a different way that these ghosts interact with the living than in the first one. While we see agression and yelling from the creepy things in the first movie, the ghosts in this second installment seem to be a bit more articulate, and with more meaningful plot lines. I can't decide whether this helps or hurts the movie. It's almost more terrifying to have to deal with spirits that can't remember how to reason than with ones that are mercilessly messing with you on purpose. At the same time, it makes the mystery all that much more personal once they finally figure it out.

PS it has to do something with this person.

Bottom line: the way the plot unfolds is an improvement over the first one, but the main haunters in this movie are not as scary as the ones in the original.

7 outa 10. Pretty good horror movie, especially for a sequel.

DON'T FORGET TO ENTER FOR THE $25 FANDANGO GIFT CARD, GIVEAWAY ENTRY IN THE LAST POST!