ORCS AND DEMONS
Stifle your screams in The Conjuring 2 or enter the world of Warcraft
The Conjuring 2 ★★★★★
SCARY movies are good for you, say some cyber experts. Searching for scientific answers on the internet can be almost as frightening as watching a horror movie, but when a clutch of medical sites agree on a subject, one starts to wonder whether they might be right.
In the case of horror films, web doctors say they offer “symbolic catharsis”, create a sense of control over fear, make one feel closer to other living humans and deliver a euphoric dose of adrenaline.
Some say scaring yourself silly can even help you lose weight. The medical establishment has not yet endorsed that theory, and strongly warns that tender viewers should be kept away from the scream screen.
Illicitly watching a B-grade slasher film as a child put me off the genre (and gave me nightmares) for years, but of late I have begun to appreciate the artistry of those who lead the field. One of these is director James Wan, who paid homage to classic ’70s horror in his 2013 film The Conjuring and continues to do so in the sequel, imaginatively titled The Conjuring 2.
The film reunites actors Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren — the real-life couple who investigated a suspected haunting in Enfield, England, in 1977. Fresh from the bloody aftermath of Amityville, uxorious Ed and the missus are persuaded to travel across the Atlantic to the home of single mother Peggy Hodgson, played with a doorstop British council-house accent by Australian actress Frances O’Connor.
The star of the film is Madison Wolfe, who plays 11-year-old Janet Hodgson, one of Peggy’s four children. Children should not watch horror movies, particularly horror movies starring children, because there is nothing scarier, if you ask me, than a demon-possessed child.
Whether Janet is really being tortured by supernatural beings or whether she is playing her part in an elaborate hoax is a debate that troubles the Warrens right up to the chesttightening finale. So skilled is Wan in playing the strings of the fear fiddle that this film does not have one climax — it is rather a two-and-a-bithour symphony of terror best dealt with by keeping one’s scarf in one’s mouth at all times. LS