"KEEP BUSTIN'."

The Conjuring 2

tn_conjuring2If you thought the conjuring in THE CONJURING was the only conjuring, you’re in for a big surprise, buddy. Because now there’s a THE CONJURING 2 and I gotta tell you, it is not about dealing with the repercussions of the previous conjuring. It is one or more totally new conjurings.

In case you get your 1-2 word title ghost franchises mixed up, THE CONJURING is the one by James Wan (DEATH SENTENCE, FURIOUS 7) that’s not INSIDIOUS. INSIDIOUS is the one that stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, THE CONJURING is the one that stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. They play the famous “real life demonologists” Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were involved with investigating most of the alleged ghost cases that have been made into movies other than CASPER, which they were not able to investigate due to a scheduling conflict. This chapter opens with them on the case that became THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, but is mostly about the one that became GHOSTWATCH.

The movie connects these two with a spirit that Ed and Lorraine are both having visions of and spooks Lorraine so bad she wants to quit the biz. She’s surprised when Ed makes a painting that looks just like the same entity she saw; I was surprised by the implication that she had never bothered to tell him “Yeah, it’s a nun with black around her eyes.”

Still, they’re convinced to go to the London suburb of Enfield to help out a single mother of three with weird shit going on in her house. This after a very strong Ed-and-Lorraine-less section depicting the different members of the family – mother Peggy (Frances O’Connor, A.I., WINDTALKERS) and four kids – separately encountering spooky shit, and their evolution from “there must be some explanation” to “we’re so convinced this is something supernatural that we’re willing to run screaming to the neighbors in the middle of the night” to “for crying out loud even the cops saw it, they just can’t do anything because there aren’t any laws against ghosts.”

mp_conjuring2Written by Wan with Carey & Chad Hayes (HOUSE OF WAX, episodes of Baywatch Nights) and David Leslie Johnson (ORPHAN), it has a pretty solid structure that mostly got past the “weird things happen, then it’s normal again with no consequences, then more weird things happen, repeat” formula that I don’t like about ghost movies. The things they figure out about the apparitions and their visions do build to a solution to the problem, and the emphasis on these square characters’ love for each other is pretty unique in movies, especially horror. Not many horror sequels would take the time to have the hero calm everybody by singing them an Elvis song, unless it was to set up a scare. This is just a character moment.

Or did that happen in SLEEPAWAY CAMP 3? I can’t remember.

Like all of Wan’s ghost movies, I started out thinking “This is one of the most effective ghost movies I’ve seen!” and ended thinking “I guess I just don’t really like ghost movies that much.” But it’s fun. Wan turns his usual bag of tricks upside down and spills out its contents, coming up with gimmicks and scares involving shadows, reflections, toys (of course), records, TV broadcasts, waking up on the ceiling. And there’s a character called “The Crooked Man” who’s like the Babadook meets Jack Skellington, and at one point pops his face in frame for a jump scare that kinda reminded me of Large Marge. The reality of the movie allows for both a cartoon character ghost like him and one that looks like Marilyn Manson in a nun’s habit.

Wan’s directorial prowess has escalated exponentially on this one. It looks beautiful – the house (inside and out) is especially well designed – and I was entranced by the ingenious camera moves. So many filmatists these days want their shots to look spontaneous and improvised, but I’m a sucker for the ones that seem like they were carefully charted out and diagrammed months in advance. It makes sense that this cinematographer, Don Burgess, was the director of photography for several Robert Zemeckis movies, including POLAR EXPRESS.

(Not relevant, but worth mentioning: he also shot BLIND FURY and the Fred Dryer movie DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.)

That camera glides around and it’s willing to have De Palma-type patience or Raimi-type crazy energ,y but without ever feeling like it’s copping somebody else’s style. My favorite scene is when little Billy is walking through the house at night, steps on his toy fire truck and rolls it into the tent he has set up at the end of the hallway. The camera goes into his bedroom with him but keeps the tent in view so that we can stare at it for unbearably long, waiting for that damn fire truck to come back out. Even though it’s not a POV shot the camera keeps kind of hiding around the corner and then peeking back at the tent. And when it’s just out of view the tension is even higher.

I’m so excited about Wan’s direction that I’ve been trying to find somebody I think would like it more than me so I can recommend it to them. As impressed as I was, I just can’t seem to get past my distaste about the movie portraying real life exploitative scam artists like the Warrens as heroic pillars of integrity. If moviegoers want to be gullible and believe in phony magic bullshit as a “true story,” that’s one thing, but calling these people by name, showing their photos at the end, and celebrating them, is just too much.

This one even pushes it further with a scene where they go on a talk show and a guy who points out the actual truth that they are liars and phonies is treated as the bad guy instead of the voice of reason. And a plot twist where it briefly seems to have been a hoax perpetrated by the girls makes it clear that the writers aren’t stupid, they are very aware that everybody fucking knows that it was a hoax perpetrated by the girls. But they’re telling us with straight faces to believe that it was a real thing that happened. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than DELIVER US FROM EVIL, where the director in interviews claims to really believe in his story of a cop who performs exorcisms on criminals.

Incidentally, the British researcher who was much more involved in the case and wrote a book about it does not speak too highly of the Warrens.

I don’t know. If only they used fake names for the characters maybe I wouldn’t find it so insidious and sinister, and be able to appreciate it for what it is: a stylish, clever movie with a very good cast, enjoyable period fashion and music, and a wide variety of imaginatively spooky imagery. I think it’s better than the first one, for what that’s worth. I look forward to Wan’s AQUAMAN movie and I would be thrilled if he had another DEATH SENTENCE in him, not a big studio tentpole gig for hire but something he’s excited about that happens to not be a horror movie. For some reason it’s his non-horror movies that I like best. But he should do what he wants.

And to show that there are no hard feelings here is my treatment for THE CONJURING 3, I think this is a real good idea James you’re gonna love it.

————————————————————-

THE CONJURING 3
TREATMENT BY VERN, September 2016

THE FOLLOWING IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY ABOUT THE GHOST IN THE MOVIE THREE MEN AND A BABY.

1990. In the cold open, ED AND LORRAINE WARREN are in London performing an exorcism on a British wolfman named WILLIAM RAMSEY. [NOTE: the book Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession by Ed & Lorraine Warren takes place in 1983, but they were writing the book around this time, and transposing it to this time period would allow a wolfman to be in the movie]

Arriving home after the promotional tour that got them involved in that, they lovingly cuddle and agree to stop investigating the occult for a while because it is too spooky and what not. Ed will paint and they will live humbly off the proceeds of all of the movie deals they had no choice but to make in order to educate the public about the dangers of the spiritual world.

Their friend ROBERT DAVIS CHASE comes to visit and show them a video tape. It is of Ted Danson and Celeste Holm with a baby. He pauses it. In the background a small boy is peering through some curtains. Robert explains that this is the 1987 comedy hit THREE MEN AND A BABY, and that nobody involved can explain why a little boy is seen in the background of this scene. He says that there was a 9 year old boy who killed himself with a shotgun in the house where it was filmed.

At first Ed and Lorraine decline to get involved, but when Lorraine is examining the box to the VHS tape she notices that it is economically priced for sell-through, and is likely to infect every household in the United States with evil demonic mojo. The Warrens reluctantly come to agree that they have no choice but to once again be warriors for The Lord.

mp_conjuring31990 MONTAGE. News footage of the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Operation Desert Shield. The Hubble telescope. Clips of The Simpsons and Twin Peaks. Milli Vanilli exposed. Mandela freed. The birth of Jonathan Lipnicki. Now we are seeing New York, and the camera is floating toward the scary house they will be investigating. It passes a movie theater with posters for GHOST. All this is set to “U Can’t Touch This.”

They meet the THE ROBINSONS, an ordinary middle class family dealing with mental illness, alcoholism and separation. The Warrens are relieved that they got there in time to protect them from any dishonest people who might try to take advantage of their severe family dysfunction and superstitious beliefs, which would be just awful. The Robinsons explain when they moved in they heard about the boy’s death, but didn’t think much of it until they started hearing him playing and laughing through the walls.

At night, Ed is walking around the house when suddenly he hears a popping sound, and then a spooky slide whistle. A radio has turned on by itself, fuzzily playing the 1990 hit “Groove Is In the Heart” by Deee-Lite. Suddenly he is startled by a bizarre voice and movement near his feet. He shines his flashlight and sees that it is only a Furby that has turned itself on.

There is all kinds of investigating and etc. that happens. In the attic Lorraine finds hundreds of drawings of a strange man with a mustache, who she believes is a malevolent spirit that possessed the boy and caused him to kill himself and now the boy’s spirit is crying out for help through the movie THREE MEN AND A BABY. She is convinced that if they do not free his soul by the release of THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY on November 21st then the house will turn into a portal that will attract all of the dark demons of such and such (some religious-ish shit from one of their books or whatever).

Also, menacing suits from Touchstone Pictures keep snooping around. Ed refers them to his agent but soon realizes they are not interested in the film rights to the inevitable THREE MEN AND A BABY book that the Warrens will have the responsibility to write to share what they have learned with the world. These guys seem to be trying to interfere as some sort of cover-up.

One night Ed and Lorraine are having dinner with the Robinsons when Lorraine suddenly starts uncontrollably quoting lines from Cheers. She just keeps going and not responding to Ed trying to stop her. She is having ONE OF THOSE FUCKING SCARY VISIONS where she is somewhere else, and she sees the Mustache Man from the drawings. He wraps his arms around her, and she tries to scream, but nothing comes out. In the real world she is sitting at the table, looking as if she’s having a seizure. Ed is asking her if she’s okay, and she’s whispering something. She keeps repeating it until he understands: “Release me. Release me.”

ED: Release you from what, honey?

IN THE SPIRIT WORLD Lorraine is still trying to pull away from the demon. She hears the CLICK of a tape deck. “Release me / Release me…” It’s AN EERIE, WARBLY CASSINGLE of the era appropriate hit “Release Me” by Wilson Phillips.

Then she snaps out of it.

Later, Ed discovers a hidden box of VHS tapes on which Mrs. Robinson recorded numerous episodes of Magnum P.I., and on the label there are drawings similar to the ones of the mustache demon. Ed realizes that those are not depictions of an apparition after all, they are just very poor drawings of Tom Selleck, who Mrs. Robinson is obsessed with. It seems that the woman has been lying to them to try to have a connection to the cast of THREE MEN AND A BABY.

They return home, disappointed. Robert calls and says he has someone he needs them to meet. “Trust me on this one.” He arrives at their home with a guest: THREE MEN AND A BABY DIRECTOR LEONARD NIMOY, played by Zachary Quinto. He explains that the movie was not filmed in a house at all, but on a soundstage in Toronto.

TORONTO, CANADA. The Warrens find the haunted soundstage. Here they will confront and exorcise the film’s primary ghost-tagonist: a child-sized Ted Danson wearing a top hat, like the cardboard standee in the movie that people mistook for a ghost child.

ED: Of course! That’s why you were quoting Cheers, and not POLICE ACADEMY or COCOON. The demon has chosen the form of Ted Danson wearing a top hat. But he is really small for some reason!

They find the pieces of the set in storage and rebuild it. There is a storm and lots of scary wind and lightning and things breaking and everybody is real intense. At one point Ed picks up the demon and it pees on him, one of many loving references peppered throughout the film to show that James Wan and collaborators are huge fans of the THREE MEN AND A BABY property.

Eventually they defeat the little Ted Danson guy in a really thrilling and exciting way and he is zapped through a portal in the fake window.

In the epilogue, the Warren’s reflect on their unbreakable bond as Ed puts the VHS tape of THREE MEN AND A BABY and his ticket stub to THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY on a shelf in the Museum of the Occult.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2016 at 10:25 am and is filed under Horror, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

19 Responses to “The Conjuring 2”

  1. hahahahah yes! also your treatment reminded me of this tim & eric bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umgUDUxHKfY&ab_channel=AdultSwim

  2. I pretty much made my thoughts known in the comments section for the first one so to keep it short, I really liked this one but not as much as the first one (though I think it’s a close runner-up). So you know how much to discredit my opinion: I really like ghost stories (though not necessarily ghost movies) and still enjoy and defend J-Horror.

    As for the portraying scam artists as heroes, well I’m conflicted. Ultimately after wrestling with my self over the whole art and morals thing I decided to cop out and go with art in this case. Yes, in real life the Warrens were scam artists either cooperating with get-rich-quick assholes or taking advantage of emotionally disturbed people. The Conjuring movies pretty blatantly praises them and makes them out to brave heroes which could trick a whole new slew of people into think they are/were fine upstanding people and not assholes.

    My closest frame of reference for this would be Olive Stone’s JFK. An absolutely magnificent movie that was made to push some awful truther bullshit (the problem with STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS was that it was not a good movie to forgive it for it’s truther propaganda). I love it even though I do not buy what it is selling and I personally think it is selling something morally rotten.

    Not sure if that makes me a bad person or not, definitely a sell out though. Point is, I feel James Wan’s film-making and storytelling skills are good enough to make me sell out my morals I guess (means anything I’m quick to tell people that the movie is bullshit and to not believe it and instead enjoy the ride).

  3. Also bravo on your CONJURING 3 pitch, I hope the right people are reading!

  4. Loving that pitch.

  5. Vern, Darth Maul’s death is copied from Blind Fury!

  6. geoffreyjar – I definitely would not say you have sold out your morals. I’m not trying to take any kind of moral stance against the movie, it just bothers me too much to let go of while watching the movie. If I could get past it I would be happy to!

  7. “The birth of Jonathan Lipnicki.” Nuff said.

  8. My hat is off to you once again, Vern. I am assuming that Part 4 will feature a controversially shark-jumping time machine and they’ll be investigating the ghost of the munchkin who hung himself on the set of The Wizard Of Oz.

  9. So, I’m in the midst of watching this after renting it and wow. I dunno. This is pretty bad and boring. I remember enjoying the first one but I am struggling to stay engaged with part 2.

  10. And is it just me or does it feel like Patrick Wilson is doing a Bob Odenkirk impression?

  11. That treatment managed to be hilarious and something that I’d love to see at the same time. Great job.

    I definitely agree that the “based on true events”-shit brings those movies down, but it was easier for me to get past that this time and enjoy the movie than with the first one, since here, the real-life explanation is a hoax (while in the first one it was domestic violence and child abuse). And, seriously, the scares were so well done that despite my misgivings about the Warren, I have to rate this as one of the best horror movies of recent times.

  12. That fake Conjuring 3 Poster is actually really scary to me, I’m not kidding. As for the real Conjuring 2, it was a great moviegoing experience (I actually found the loud, boisterous crowd part of the fun for once) and I actually found it’s unique blend of aggressive scares and heartfelt sentimentality refreshing and charming. The fact that it ends on (NOT REALLY A SPOILER) a tender dance between the main characters and not a giant stupid jump scare really won me over.

    Even though other people found The Warrens incredibly bland heroes (I can suspend disbelief enough to not be offended by whatever the real-life Warrens were like), I actually liked that they’re a normal, loving couple, when most other movies would have them bickering or estranged, which hasn’t really worked for me since Die Hard 1 or The Abyss. And even though this is nowhere on the same level, I do like that Wan’s films do have a little of that show-offy filmatism like The Shining or Poltergeist, where the scares are obviously there, but are technically staged with such finesse that you can sit back and enjoy the artistry going on (that long, long take with the girl out of focus in the background had the entire theater on the edge of its seat).

    If I had any problems it would probably be with the anti-climactic ending (which was even more anticlimactic than the “that’s it?” ending of the first one). Also the on-the-nose musical choices were eye-rollingly bad (We need a moratorium on “London Calling” playing over a montage of London). Little did I know that the usage of “I Started a Joke” RIGHT AFTER a character gets busted for starting a joke, would get trumped a few months later with Suicide Squad’s unbelievably groan-worthy needle-drops. (Which effectively used “I Started a Joke” in the trailer but seems to be the only song in the world left out of the movie!)

  13. I remember seeing the scene where he’s painting the picture of the entity from his dream with this determined look on his face, and then he shows it to Lorraine and she freaks out over it, and he acts like he’s confused as to why she’s having such a response.
    Well, it’s a fricking terrifying demon nun, maybe that’s why???

    That’s what I thought when I saw it, but I learned later that apparently they had originally planned the “hero demon” to look completely different. Apparently originally it was going to be a generic monster-looking demon with horns or something, but in a decision that came up later, maybe involving a bunch of re-shoots (i can’t remember specifics), they came up with the scary nun demon. They filmed the scenes with the nun demon and did the CGI nun demon stuff in post and re-shoots.

    Unfortunately the one place it really doesn’t work is when he shows her this painting and can’t figure out why anyone would be upset by it. Apparently originally it was a less grotesque image there.

  14. My mom used to have tea with Lorraine Warren when she lived in Connecticut. Just regular tea, not haunted tea.

  15. “If only they used fake names for the characters maybe I wouldn’t find it so insidious and sinister”

    I see what you did there, and I approve.

    In prep for the third one hitting HBO Max, I’ve been watching the series for the first time. I’ve only done the ones with Pat and Vera, so C1, C2, and Annabelle Comes Home. I can now safely say I’m not a huge fan of this franchise. I have no idea why these movies are rated R. Despite the good and very game casts, I find it hard to buy into a lot of what these movies are selling. I find them to be particularly unscary, weirdly wholesome, cornball movies. They’re about good families, happy marriages, and religion, and how demons are very real and also bad, and religion conquers all, and no one dies. So a few degrees away from a Chick tract.

    That said, once you become used to the tone, it’s easier to enjoy them. The bit where Patrick Wilson does his best Elvis was probably my favorite part in any of them. On the whole Annabelle 3 was probably my overall favorite, if only because it spent a lot of time in the haunted trophy room, which is the coolest aspect of the series. We finally got a little spooky samurai action.

    I agree that it would’ve been interesting for the movie to reveal the Enfield poltergeist was a hoax. To have their cake and eat it too, they could’ve said the demon nun actually followed the Warrens there, and thereby they’re at fault for putting the family in real danger and have to vanquish evil, etc. Best of both worlds.

    Anyway, it’s gonna be hard for anything to dethrone Aquaman as my favorite James Wan movie, but I’m willing to keep trying.

    And if you’re interested in seeing something with a similar set-up to the Conjuring movies but done better overall– check out the series Evil. It’s great.

  16. ANNABELLE: CREATION aka ANNABELLE: THE PREQUEL TO ANNABELLE, WHICH IS A THE CONJURING PREQUEL is the only one of these I can fully get behind and give the much coveted Pacman2.0 Seal of Approval (although I haven’t see THE NUN or LA LLORONA). Atypical and appealing characters, a creepy feel and breezy to watch; a fun, straight forward and modest horror movie, just like the good old days, and the good current days for that matter.

  17. Okay, there’s some crazy synchronicity happening here! I too became interested in this franchise because of the ads for the upcoming one on HBO Max, so I also watched C1, C2, and ANNABELLE COMES HOME recently. For some reason about the time the first one came out I suddenly developed a fear for ghost/possession movies and could no longer watch them. I think part of that was because I was living alone. During the pandemic I moved in with a friend, so that part was no longer a big deal. But also, like Mr. M said in the comments for C1 (which I also just read) there’s something about the fact that these movies are about you being in danger while you’re feeling vulnerable in your own home. I had no problem seeing slasher type movies during the past several years, and logically, I know I’m in way more danger of being attacked by a real, crazy person than a ghost. It’s that I can go in my house and lock my door against the real person and feel safe, even though that feeling is a false sense of security. What can I say? My lizard brain fears what it fears.

    But what really drew me to these movies was Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, and the relationship of the Warrens. I really like the 2 actors and wanted to see some movies about a married couple who seems to really love each other and have a calling they feel passionate about and are kinda badass at. Pickings are very slim for a good romance in movies nowadays. I knew of the Warrens as real people and have seen or read a little bit about them. I’m willing to maybe give them a little more benefit of the doubt than Vern. Maybe they really did believe what they were selling. Or maybe they were total con artists. But I do really like their fictional personas for these movies. The one part that made me cringe was the flashback to Lorraine’s vision when she was in the Amityville house and how it was obvious they were trying to say Ronald DeFeo was possessed and that’s why he killed his family. I guess I’m okay with them trying to make people think the haunting shit was real, but when it comes to actual murder it’s gone too far.

    Another crazy synchronicity is in the comments someone compared Patrick Wilson to Bob Odenkirk and when I was telling my roommate about watching the CONJURING movies (she won’t actually watch them with me, because she doesn’t like scary movies, but just having another person in the apartment took some of the scariness away for me) over the weekend and then was telling her about NOBODY, because I wanted to rent it, she said she was getting Wilson and Odenkirk conflated, which Dtroyt said in the comments that Wilson was doing an Odenkirk impression. Spooky!

  18. I wonder why these ghose movies always take place in someone’s home, but never at their workplace. Give us THE HAUNTED OFFICE CUBE or whatever, just to switch things up! Some telemarketer is trying to ask you about your car insurance, but a demon witch keeps bababooying in the phone and then jumpscares at him from the next cube.

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