Review:

If I was compiling a list of things that the first Conjuring movie was missing, I certainly would not have listed melodrama, pointless side characters and a musical number. While I can't exactly say that I liked the first one, at least it was okay. The Conjuring 2 almost seems like a parody of the first one, doubling down on the mythos of the Warrens and amping up the level of pure ridiculousness. Again we get the "Base on a true story" title card, but this time they have the audacity to constantly have skeptics voice their disbelief or want for proof and the Warrens give some snide remark that I guess we are supposed to find funny. One asks which is worse, the "demons" or those that pretend to believe in them to scam gullible people out of their money, to which Lorraine responds quickly and dryly "The Demons. The Demons are worse." They even open with a quick little set of scenes about the investigation of the Amityville House (we don't actually get any stuff in the house, that would have been just too interesting) with a television interview where another skeptic dare to question the Warrens and they lash back asking why anyone would fake paranormal and demonic activity and that they are only trying to help people. If I put aside how ridiculous it is for the movie to try and paint its events as real and not complete fabrications and view it just as a movie with no context, it is a technically fine film filled with unlikable characters, terrible effects, a boring story, and stuffed with unnecessary and distracting story threads that are clearly just openings for future spin-off films. The movie spends way too long on the Warren family and not enough on the actual appeal of the film, the actual horror element. I don't want to see Ed play guitar and sing an entire Elvis song. I don't care about the school bully. The relationship between Ed and Lorraine is not why I am watching a horror movie. There are way too many scenes that only exist to play a sad song to try and manipulate out feelings that the poorly inserted melodrama can't muster. They spend way too much time trying to make secondary villains out of characters who want actual proof and not just the word of two charlatans and a little girl. One of the biggest strengths of the first movie was how simple and streamlined the story was, at least the story of the "haunting". The Conjuring 2 is willing to sacrifice that in order to be a backdoor for new movie franchises, made much worse by the fact that the appearance of these two characters makes no sense. The worse of the two is a hilariously bad CGI monster that has no reason to be involved in the haunting, let alone the movie. Really, the unintentionally hilarious moments outnumber the tense and/or scary ones by a large number. The CGI monster is the absolute worst effect, but there are plenty of others. The acting is fine, I guess, and the lighting, sound, and directing weren't issues, but that's about the breadth of the positives. There is nothing new or innovative. The story is a mess of nonsense smothered over a "haunting" that isn't particularly eventful. Even if I eliminate the entire idea of the claim that it's "based on a true story" we are still left with an underwhelming and uneventful story that is padded with uninteresting family and relationship drama and time-wasting side stories about how tired Lorraine is of people not taking her seriously. If we trimmed out all that, we could have an average 90 minute popcorn horror movie, but The Conjuring 2 is 134 minutes of self-importance and cheese.