‘The Conjuring 2’: More Warren malarky

If you still haven't seen "The Conjuring 2," you might want to check out the review of the film that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio:

In 1973, when William Friedkin’s film “The Exorcist” opened, audiences were thrilled. They were frightened. They were grossed out. And they were shocked. But in the end, they were thrilled.

Based on the best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty, “The Exorcist” used a real-life case as its basis. But Blatty changed several aspects of the incident, and as Friedkin’s screenwriter of record, he included those changes in his screenplay.

One thing that neither Blatty nor Friedkin resorted to, however, was claiming that their work was “based on actual events.” They took a riveting story – one that, Friedkin later claimed, was a study of “faith” – and made a movie that many consider one of the scariest of all time.

That was then, though. And, changing with the tenor of the times, James Wan has adjusted accordingly. Known mostly for having co-created the “Saw” series – the films that helped spawn the sub-genre of torture-porn – Wan has become a virtual publicist for the QUOTE-UNQUOTE paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Based mostly on their association with the case popularly known as “The Amityville Horror,” the Warrens established a reputation. And based on that reputation, they are the stars both of Wan’s “The Conjuring” – which was released in 2013 – and now “The Conjuring 2.”

This new film is a retelling of a 1977 English case the Warrens apparently checked out. And by saying “checked out,” I’m being generous. According to the website History vs. Hollywood, the Warrens were just two of many investigators who visited a house in the North London suburb of Enfield allegedly haunted by a poltergeist. In fact, the site says, “most articles about the Enfield Poltergeist don’t even mention the Warrens.”

Never one to let facts get in the way of a movie plot, director Wan and his team of screenwriters put the Warrens – again played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga – at the center of the story. Called by the Catholic Church to investigate – the Warrens and Church officials seem to be on first-name bases – Ed and Lorraine travel to London, camp out in the Enfield home of Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) and her four children. They’re particularly interested in Hodgson’s 11-year-old daughter Janet (played alluringly by Madison Wolfe).

What they find would creep out Bram Stoker. Mysterious noises. Slamming doors. Strange entities. Crosses that turn upside down on their own volition. A levitating Janet. And so on.

And while the movie, through the Warrens, seems to address the understandable skepticism that the real-life Enfield case aroused, it does so in a way designed to act as the straw-man argument the movie then rebuts with spectacular computer-generated bombast.

But as has been proven time and again with computer-generated imagery, camera tricks aren’t a good substitute for actual dramatic flair. After the first half hour, “The Conjuring 2” devolves into a paint-by-number CGI exercise.

In 1973, some frightened audience members actually walked out of “The Exorcist.” James Wan’s lame effort, these four decades later, is more likely to make you walk out yawning – unless, of course, you’re in the market for poppycock.