PopHorror Let's Get Scared
James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 is one sequel I like more than the original, which has only happened a small handful of times. The Conjuring 2 was released, some nightmares of my own, bringing into play my phobia, which I will get to later. I will admit I dreaded going to sleep after my trauma came on the big screen.
Let’s get into the review so I can explain my motives.
Synopsis
Ed and Lorraine Warren travel to North London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by a supernatural spirit. Against their own intentions and abilities, the couple decides to give one more try for the family.
The Conjuring 2 brings you in on an old life of mine, with a mentally ill mother waking us up at 3 AM because she saw a ghost. I carried it into my beliefs and spent my late teens and twenties hunting ghosts all night. Those are the good memories. They give me hope, as we live on opposite sides of the country, we are still best friends twenty years later. The film brings back all those fun and sometimes scary moments. I know the intention is for a gloomy background even in the home, but to me, it was brightly lit in its own way.
One thing is certain: won’t play hide and seek with no damn ghost. The film relied on jump scares, and it worked on me several times. I hate jump scares because, personally, I think they are kind of lazy. That was not the case in The Conjuring 2. The scares were curated with the exact pinpoint of the scene to trigger a dark part of your brain where the cobwebs grow until it is called to duty. That is exactly what it did to send me into a full-on panic attack.
Family Tradition
Ever since I was a kid, I had this dream of a ghostly nun in an antique wheelchair. Even as an adult, I can still hear her laugh in my head. I think of everything in this film, the nun terrified me from the painting, and so on. I may have screamed like a kid who was afraid of Santa Claus. That was the mission for the cast and crew. They wanted to scare as many people as possible in so many ways.
The Conjuring 2 also stands as a look into paranormal investigators and the way the nation viewed their work. It was not always taken seriously, as if it were some kind of joke. They had everything right, until eventually they would need the Warrens. No one respected their work or said it was fake, done for attention. The Conjuring universe is built on factual investigations. I know, all the cool kids don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m not cool at all.
In The End
Maybe I just found it fun with people who didn’t believe that my friend and I gladly cruised around the most haunted city in the U.S. I won’t ever deny being a believer because there were good times, and scary times that everyone should face. We all deserve a good scare, and footsteps at 3 AM that belong to someone invisible. In the end, nuns and all aside, this film deserves so much more love as the franchise carries on. One more thing, I ain’t watching no Nun movie either.
