Why The Conjuring 2 is One of the Best Horror Sequels Ever

When The Conjuring became one of the most successful horror films in modern history upon its release in 2013, a sequel was inevitable. We didn’t know then that the film, based on the case files of paranormal investigators and “demonologists” Ed and Lorraine Warren, would launch a whole cinematic universe, but at least one follow-up was essential.

When The Conjuring 2 (airing this month on SYFY) arrived in 2016, it promised another adventure from the case files of the Warrens, this one devoted to one of the most famous hauntings in English history. That would have been enough to make the film work with audiences eager for more jump scares and demonic monsters. But instead of glancing across the same territory, The Conjuring 2 went even deeper, offering a story about families, destiny, and faith that remains one of the best horror sequels of the 21st century, and an essential horror story in its own right.

Why The Conjuring 2 is one of the best modern horror sequels

The sequel opens a few years after The Conjuring, as Ed and Lorraine (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are entering what might be the peak of their fame. They’re giving lectures, appearing on television to battle skeptics, and they’ve been sent to investigate the Amityville haunting, a story that will grip the public imagination in the 1970s. Their profile is rising, but with it Lorraine starts to sense a tremendous cost to their work. She sees a terrifying vision of Ed’s death, one that involves a horrific demon nun, and urges him to step back from field work and focus more on lecturing. 

But Ed and Lorraine can’t retire from paranormal investigations just yet, because they’re called in to help a working class family in England whose home is infested with evil, much of it manifesting through the voice and actions of daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe). Seeing how deep the phenomena runs, and how desperate single mother Peggy (Frances O’Connor) is for help, Ed and Lorraine agree to attempt to exorcise the house, even if it means that Ed is in the crosshairs of something truly dangerous. 

On a craft level, this is a horror film once again overseen by the likes of director James Wan, so The Conjuring 2 works as a pure thrill-ride piece of entertainment. Wan is a master of winding up jump scares and then deploying them in unexpected ways, something particularly evident when Lorraine is in a room alone with a seemingly haunted painting of The Nun (who would later get her own movie). To make things even more interesting, Wan uses the film’s time period to deliberately evoke horror films of the 1970s and early 1980s, with visuals references to everything from Poltergeist to The Exorcist. It’s a horror feast, but it’s not the key to what makes The Conjuring 2 tick. 

The core of the film, the core of the whole franchise even when they’re not appearing in one of the spinoffs, is the chemistry between Wilson and Farmiga, who are tasked with playing dead-serious paranormal investigators who are also just a couple, bound together by fate and love, who are trying to build a family of their own even as they do dangerous, often uncharted work. Setting aside the deviations from the real-life Warrens and their often controversial involvement in cases like this, when you see the pair as characters embodied by these particular actors, you see something complex, deep, and pure. A good trick to pull in any movie about a haunting is to deliver something that even the “experts” in the story are afraid of, and The Conjuring 2 not only does that, but roots it deeply in how much Ed and Lorraine love each other, and how important their work is to their dynamic. It places them in an emotional Catch-22 in which the only way out is through. Combine that with the parallel story of the Hodgson family and their haunted house, and it’s hard to avoid the emotional bonds tying this movie together.

The Conjuring 2 might not ever reach the same level of cultural permeation and popularity as its predecessor, but as a sequel, it adds complexity and depth to a story horror fans already cared about, ensured that Wilson and Farmiga would be horror icons for a long time, and delivered another round of amazing scares. What more could you want?

The Conjuring 2 airs this month on SYFY. Check the Schedule for listings.