Remember when Dick Van Dyke pranced about giving it the old “Waheeeey! I’m a cockney! I’m a cockney! Apples and pears, butcher’s hook, you prissy little wankahhhh!”? Well, The Conjuring 2 isn’t much better.
You can tell, straight off the bat, that all the British dialogue was written by our American cousins, to the point where it just leaves you shaking your head (it’s bloody well annoying it is, guv’nor, that’s for troof!).
However, it’s not just the bad dialog that grated me in this film, but also the wording itself, like when we meet two of our young ladies, they speak to one another as though they are trying to explain some background info to an invisible third party. Example: “I’m giving you the spirit board we both made together” as opposed to “Here’s our spirit board”.
It's especially grating seeing as, five minutes later, our leading young lady explains to her sister that she and her friend Camilla made it in school. Just bad writing, if you ask me, and you sort of did by reading this. Fair is fair.
There is also a large volume of extremely irritating clichés and cheap gimmicks that the first movie forced down our throats, which we are now left to endure a second helping of, and a few extra entrees that took very little imagination to conjure up (I couldn’t resist), like how the channel changes by itself, and suddenly the remote isn’t where she left it (insert ghost noises and rattling chains here).
The acting is also pretty sub-par as well, which just leaves the entire flick feeling hollow with zero substance, even from seasoned actors Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who have proved their worth many times over before this film.
There were a few moments that grab you and make you jump, of course, but this is again down to cheap tricks and jump scares that have zero unpredictability, each and every one of them expected. Instead of relying on a genuinely unsettling atmosphere, it makes you wonder if this cheap tripe is what they were deliberately going for, or if good writing just seemed too much like hard work (ooh, there’s a noise behind the door – opens door – nothing there, oh shit it's behind them! Yawn).
Aaron's Spoiler-Free Verdict: If you want a good film, don’t bother. If you want one to watch whilst entertaining guests, maybe this will fill the gap. – 5.5/10
Aaron James Waters is a best-selling Pulp Fiction writer who has written more books than he's actually read.
He's also the rotten apple of the group who thinks this whole Star Wars thing needs to hurry up and die already.
You can find all of Aaron's works on Amazon!
