There’s something profoundly exhausting about The Conjuring 2. It’s like being trapped in a haunted house built by a perfectionist with ADHD—every door creaks, every shadow whispers, and every jump scare arrives five minutes late but still insists on applause.
James Wan, the master architect of the “Boo! But Classy!” school of horror, returns with this sequel to The Conjuring—a movie so polished it could haunt a Restoration Hardware catalog. And yet, for all the screams, spinning crosses, and Victorian wallpaper, The Conjuring 2 manages to feel less like a horror movie and more like a very long sermon on the importance of believing in ghosts, nuns, and Patrick Wilson’s sideburns.
Déjà Boo: The Same Haunted House, Just with British Accents
This time, we’re packing our crucifixes and heading to 1977 England, where the Hodgson family is being terrorized by an angry old ghost named Bill Wilkins. Bill’s hobbies include growling through little girls, throwing furniture, and dying in recliners. The family calls in the experts—America’s favorite supernatural power couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren(Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga)—to figure out if this is a real haunting or just another case of British plumbing gone rogue.
But before we even reach soggy London, Wan treats us to a cameo in Amityville, because why not start your movie with a different, better-known haunting? Lorraine Warren (Farmiga) has a vision of a demon nun that looks like Marilyn Manson in a habit, and Ed (Wilson) gets impaled in slow motion by a tree that looks suspiciously like an angry salad fork. Lorraine wakes up screaming. Congratulations, we’ve set the tone: everyone’s going to suffer, and so are we.
The Hodgsons: Britain’s Most Haunted Family (and Least Interesting)
The Hodgson family is pure working-class misery. Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) is a single mother juggling four kids, one haunted house, and a budget smaller than the Warrens’ travel fund. Her daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe) becomes the demonic mouthpiece for Bill Wilkins, whose catchphrase is basically “GET OUT OF MY CHAIR.”
To the film’s credit, Madison Wolfe is excellent—she goes from innocent to terrifying to “somebody please get this child a priest and a nap” with ease. The problem is that her possession scenes start to feel like reruns of The Exorcist on BBC Two. There’s growling, there’s levitating, there’s drooling—oh look, she’s hanging from the ceiling again! At this point, even the ghost seems tired.
And don’t worry, the movie makes sure you get it. Every time the Hodgsons experience something spooky, the camera spins, the violins scream, and Lorraine looks concerned in slow motion. By the halfway mark, you’ll start rooting for the ghost just to move things along.
The Warrens: Ghostbusters with Rosary Beads
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga continue their reign as the world’s most photogenic paranormal investigators. Wilson plays Ed Warren as a saintly dad who can fix ghosts and appliances, while Farmiga’s Lorraine radiates enough divine angst to fuel an entire convent of moody psychics.
They’re supposed to be the emotional core of the story, but their chemistry feels more “church bake sale” than “spiritually bonded demon fighters.” The movie keeps cutting to scenes of them making googly eyes at each other, playing Elvis on the guitar, and saying things like, “As long as we have faith, we’re never truly alone.”
That’s touching and all, but maybe less romance and more exorcism next time, huh?
And then there’s Lorraine’s big “nun problem.” Throughout the film, she’s haunted by the demonic Valak, a spectral nun who stalks her dreams like she’s auditioning for RuPaul’s Drag Hell. Every time this creature shows up, it’s genuinely unsettling—for about five seconds. Then it vanishes, only to reappear twenty minutes later like, “Miss me?” It’s less terrifying, more needy.
James Wan’s Greatest Hits (Recycled Edition)
Make no mistake: James Wan knows how to craft a scare. He’s a symphony conductor of horror—he builds tension, cues the orchestra, and times the jump scare with Swiss precision. The problem is that The Conjuring 2 feels like a playlist of his old tricks.
You’ve got:
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The slow zoom on a terrified face.
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The door that opens by itself.
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The music box that definitely doesn’t play anything cheerful.
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The mirror scare that even toddlers now expect.
At this point, Wan could direct a horror film about haunted IKEA furniture and it would still end with someone being thrown across the room by invisible forces.
Even the much-hyped “Crooked Man” scene—a nightmarish stop-motion demon that emerges from a zoetrope—feels like the product of an overcaffeinated art student who thought The Babadook needed more jazz hands.
The Conjuring Cinematic Universe (or: How to Milk a Ghost)
One can’t help but admire the shamelessness of this franchise. Warner Bros. has turned the Warrens’ real-life ghost stories into a fully-fledged horror multiverse, complete with spin-offs (Annabelle, The Nun, The Curse of La Llorona) that range from “mediocre” to “I’d rather be possessed.”
And you can see the marketing gears turning here. Every creepy artifact in the Warren’s collection gets its own close-up, like a supernatural talent reel. “Here’s the cursed toy zoetrope! Don’t worry, it’ll have its own movie in 2028!”
By the time Ed carefully places the Crooked Man toy next to the Annabelle doll, you half-expect Mickey Mouse to pop out and announce The Conjuring Land coming soon to Universal Studios.
A 134-Minute Exorcism of Your Patience
The film clocks in at over two hours, which is roughly one hour longer than the actual haunting lasted. Somewhere between Lorraine’s visions, Ed’s guitar solos, and the umpteenth shot of someone walking down a dark hallway, you realize this movie doesn’t need more scares—it needs an editor and a Red Bull.
It drags. Oh, it drags like a ghost in chains. Every subplot—skeptical scientists, Lorraine’s psychic guilt, the Hodgson’s financial woes—feels like filler between scares. By the final act, when Lorraine dramatically screams the demon’s name (“VALAK!”) and sends it back to Hell, you’ll find yourself whispering, “Take me too.”
The Theology of Jump Scares
What’s most amusing about The Conjuring 2 is how earnestly it takes itself. This isn’t a horror movie—it’s a sermon with screaming. The Warrens are presented as saintly crusaders against darkness, which would be fine if it didn’t come with the narrative subtlety of a holy water balloon to the face.
Faith, love, good versus evil—it’s all here, delivered with the gravitas of a church choir stuck in a thunderstorm. The film mistakes volume for depth and ends up preaching louder instead of saying more.
Final Verdict: 4/10 — Possessed by Its Own Ego
The Conjuring 2 isn’t terrible—it’s just tired. It’s a horror movie that’s been through too many séances, too many franchises, and far too many marketing meetings. James Wan is a gifted director, but this sequel feels like a haunted rerun—beautifully shot, well-acted, and utterly devoid of new ideas.
Yes, there are a few solid scares. Yes, Vera Farmiga could make reading the phone book sound haunted. But when your climactic showdown involves a nun named Valak being shouted back to Hell like she’s an unruly housecat, it’s hard to take seriously.
In the end, The Conjuring 2 is the cinematic equivalent of ghostly déjà vu: familiar, overlong, and faintly ridiculous. The real horror isn’t the demon—it’s realizing you’ve spent over two hours watching the same haunted house movie you saw three years ago.
And just like Valak, this franchise will never die. It’ll just keep coming back, louder, flashier, and dumber—because the devil, much like Hollywood, never sleeps.
