The Conjuring 2

About 11 hours and 50 minutes ago I saw The Conjuring 2 with my sisters and brother-in-law. This was at 4:00 pm, Friday which would make the current hour 3:10 am, Saturday. I fell asleep pretty easily a few hours ago, but details of the movie have floated back to the surface of my consciousness and now I’m addressing you from the relative safety of my own bed (AM I SAFE??) in hopes I can overcome these spectral visions and drift back to sleep. Or wait for daylight. Whichever comes first.

Don’t ask me why, but my siblings and I have been on a bit of a scary movie kick lately. Not the grossly violent bloodbath kind - the eerily suspenseful, mysterious kind. They’re fun, provided you’re not keen on getting a full night’s sleep for a few days afterward. We watched the first Conjuring movie a few months back and it scared us so miserably we couldn’t wait to see the second. I don’t understand, either.

Even though I'm clearly paying for it now, watching a scary movie in a crowded theater is exciting. You gasp and shriek in unison with each terrifying scene and for the rest of the movie you’re anticipating the horrors waiting around each darkened corner. SO MANY DARK CORNERS. And while you wait, you giggle. You sit there giggling because you know something’s gonna happen and after it’s happened and you’ve jumped 3 feet out of your seat and overturned the popcorn bucket sitting in your lap, you laugh. You laugh right out loud at yourself for being so scared. You laugh at the woman in the third row who manages to scream a little louder than everyone else. You laugh at the grown man gasping behind you. You laugh at the thought of dozens of adults sitting in a dark room waiting for what is essentially the boogeyman. It’s more funny than most comedies, really. 

Except that comedies usually don’t keep you up at night. There’s nothing funny about recalling the details of a horror film while sitting alone in a dark bedroom. Demons disguised as nuns? Possessed children speaking in tongues? Furniture getting thrown around by some unseen (and extremely unhappy) entity? Turns out these things scare me a lot more now than they did 12 hours ago.

As spooked as I am this very moment - and I’m SPOOKED - The Conjuring 2 is no match for the last horror movie I saw in theaters. That honor goes to The Ring. I remember seeing it with a couple of high school friends and it was so fetching scary we fought over who would have to sit alone in the back seat of the car on the way home. I lost... Thanks, guys… When I got home I did what any mature teenager would do - I slept on my parents’ bedroom floor that night and every night for about a week until I graduated to the living room couch. 

So while The Conjuring 2 did not linger quite as much as The Ring, I kinda wish I was asleep on my parents’ bedroom floor right about now. Because I just don't think my roommates would be as accommodating. 

POSTSCRIPT: There was a silver lining I failed to mention. For some reason Patrick Wilson picked up a guitar and sang “Fools Rush In" about 3/4 into the movie. It was nice. And it made me wonder, why doesn’t he sing in ALL his movies?? Like, if they can make it work in something like The Conjuring, then surely it could work in basically ever other movie he’s been in. 

Patrick Wilson: Singing Ghost Buster