The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 66 days to go.
The 2010s have been a great decade for cinema. We have seen a growth in support for voices that were mostly muted by privilege; voices whose songs have given us some of the best work of the entire century. Some genres have benefited enormously from these winds of change, horror being one of the biggest winners. From 2013 onwards we have witnessed how this genre has made a shift towards better quality work, something that a decade before was only present in some cult-film favorites.
Some people inside and outside the industry think the responsible for this shift in horror, particularly commercially made horror, is thanks to the success of James Wan’s The Conjuring (2013). Sure, the 2000s have some great and successful commercial horror films too, but they are the few, especially in the latter part of that decade.
Related to Film Road to Halloween: The Conjuring
The Conjuring 2 was released on the Summer of 2016 with a lot of expectations following the aforementioned success of the first entry and a few spinoffs in-between. This time, Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) travel to England to face one of their most difficult cases yet. The film tells the story of the real case of the Enfield poltergeist, an apparent demon that tried to disturb the peace of the Hodgson residence.
Peggy (Frances O’Connor), the matriarch of the family, gets concerned when she experiments first-hand one of the many manifestations of the demon in her daughters’ room. Worried for her family’s safety, particularly her youngest daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe), she decides to contact the police and the news, bringing to attention what’s happening at their home. Thanks to this media exposure, the Warrens are finally summoned to try to solve this ordeal.
James Wan is very meticulous with his work and The Conjuring 2 is a perfect example of this. The technical aspects of this film are carefully thought through, not only to create the eerie and dense atmosphere that surrounds it, but also to fluidly tell the story without missing any beat. The cinematography, for example, shines in how it’s used to balance the color palette, and the camera movement is masterfully utilized to let the story flow uninterrupted.
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The opening sequence shows exactly what I’m referring to; the Warrens are at Amityville (another famous case) when Lorraine decides to contact the paranormal presence in that house. Wan, with his crew, play this scene by putting the camera close to Farmiga’s face and that shot is the link between the real world and the paranormal world. The shot is used to continue the story “without the need” of a cut. In fact, there’s a cut there, a match cut, but it’s so subtle that it makes the shot appear continuous. There are various examples of this in the film, and everyone of them are a delight to watch.
The color palette is also an important characteristic of the film. Using the opening sequence again as an example, the reason we know we’re transported from one world to the other is because the appearance of the room changes, from light to darkness. The hues of blues used throughout the film makes it feel cold and hopeless, just like that moment.
When Lorraine learns the truth behind the Amityville murders and returns to the real world, we clearly see the colors change to warmer ones, implying comfort and security, especially in her husband arms. The atmosphere in the England scenes are felt through the screen in part thanks to this great use of colors. Those gray and blues, combined with the almost unavoidable rain that characterizes the location, makes the audience feel as if we were in the time and the space this story takes place.
Related to Film Road to Halloween: The Voices
There’s a scene near the midpoint of the film that has always been stuck in my mind since I first watched this film in theaters. The scene in question is when Ed is trying to communicate with Bill, the supposed entity disturbing the family. This sequence is so good. It begins with Janet drinking a little bit of water and leaving it in her mouth so to proof she’s not faking Bill’s voice.
What I love is what happens next; Ed begins to speak with Bill, but while they’re doing that, Ed is turning his back to Janet. What the audience see is Ed talking to Bill while facing us. Meanwhile, Janet is facing us too in the background, but she’s out of focus. I still don’t know how they pulled this off, but somehow they managed to switch Madison Wolfe with the actor playing Bill while the camera is focused in Patrick Wilson’s Ed. And then did it aging to return to her, now in focus, spilling the water. It is such a chilling effect, how you see her transform into this entity (an old man) and later turning back to a girl, all in a continuous shot. If someone tells you horror is cheap, show them this scene and shut them up.
I could continue all day detailing more technical aspects to admire from this film, but that would be doing a disservice to other non-technical aspects that are also good too. The story is easy to follow and it’s easily searchable in the internet since it’s inspired in true events. This allows the audience to connect with the characters and discern reality from fiction.
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Wan goes a little further by allowing us to know this family during the first 30 to 45 minutes of the film, creating a bond with them and making us care about them. Somehow, he manages to push the Warrens more as we learn new things from them that we didn’t know from the first film. The story of how they met, or the first time they encounter a paranormal entity, not only helps them connect with the family (especially Janet), it also helps them connect with us.
I respect a lot the directors that take their time to create a story where we care for the people experiencing it. It permits us to feel empathy towards them and wonder if someone out there has been struggling with the same problem or something close to it.
One of the main reasons this film works so well is because of the chemistry between Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. They are talented and they take their roles very seriously, but you never feel they’re acting. Everyone genuinely thinks that they are Lorraine and Ed Warren, and that they love each other and really want to help the most they can.
This is especially true in two key-moments of the film: when Ed sings Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” to the Hodgson family, and when Lorraine talks with Janet in the swing set. They sell the film right there.
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Nevertheless, no one sells the film more than the talented Madison Wolfe as Janet. It reminded me a lot of Linda Blair in The Exorcist (1973), with the possession and all, but my favorite scenes from her are the ones where she internally suffers her ordeal and can’t do anything about it. Frances O’Connor as Peggy Hodgson is outstanding too, particularly in the first half of the film. A mother dealing with her family breaking apart because of an unknown force while also struggling with real life is not an easy part to act and O’Connor did it flawlessly.
Everyone who contributed to this film did an amazing job. I cannot ignore the great art-department whose amazing sets make the movie feel more authentic. The sound departments also did a tremendous job in the sound mix, giving the chilling effects a life by making silence. Huge props too to the costume designer and the visual effects department whose combined effort created amazing ghosts, from Bill to the Nun to the Crooked Man.
If anything, this crew wouldn’t have made such a wonderful job if it wasn’t for Wan’s leadership and creativity. His experience and influences from cinema helped him create what I consider one of the best commercial horror films of the century and opened the door for more great horror films and studios to bet on them and take the necessary risks. More horror, please.
