The Conjuring 2 misses the scriptural demon-fighting mark

The Conjuring 2 and its predecessor in many ways fall outside the lines of standard Hollywood horror flicks. Both R-rated films have little bloody gore, few expletives, and no nudity or sexuality commingled lustfully with violence. Strikingly, the films’ ghost-hunting heroes draw their power from an unusual source—their own strong and loving marriage. And perhaps most peculiarly, the producers have included faith-based moviegoers in their marketing outreach. In an interview with WORLD before The Conjuring opened in 2013, screenwriters Carey and Chad Hayes said they based their script on Ephesians 6:12, a passage describing Christians’ struggle on earth as one against the spiritual forces of evil.

“This is the movie about how to overcome [evil],” Chad Hayes claimed.

In spite of this authoritative assertion, the Conjuring films are more like how-not-to manuals.

Each film details an allegedly true case of demon possession that Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) investigated in the 1970s. The Conjuring 2, newly released and sitting way atop this past weekend’s box office, opens in 1976 after the Warrens probe an apparently haunted house in Amityville, N.Y. Citing physical and spiritual exhaustion (and a premonition of her husband’s death), Lorraine decides to end their ghost-busting business. But a series of terrifying events a year later in Enfield, England, draws the Warrens back to their mission field.

British police say they’re powerless to help overwhelmed divorcée Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) and her four children. Attempting to drive the family out of their house, the spirit of an old man who died in a corner rocking chair is focusing his hateful energy on 12-year-old Janet (a talented Madison Wolfe), who earlier tinkered with a Ouija board.

Lorraine begins the investigation at the house, not with prayer (or fasting) but with a group séance. The Warrens do take a scientific approach to their work, setting up special cameras and microphones to discern whether the haunting is hoax or hell-sent. James Wan again directs a richly detailed, patiently teased out horror movie that delivers many terrifying jolts. Chairs slide, doors slam, shadows walk across a wall, and Janet speaks in deep, snarling voices.

Lorraine begins to sense that a second, more powerful evil presence she dealt with in Amityville has followed her across the ocean. But the Warrens fight back with techniques that rarely square with Scripture. Mishandling Luke 8:30, Lorraine claims that knowing the demon’s name gives her the power to cast it out. (Sceva’s seven would-be-exorcist sons learned the hard way about failing to establish proper spiritual authority.) And only with a few minutes left in The Conjuring 2 do the Warrens finally manage anything close to a Christian intervention, although it’s largely symbolic. Ed extends a cross toward a gruesome, many-fanged fiend in a nun’s habit and follows the exclamation “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” with a Latin incantation. Still, when all’s well, Ed credits Lorraine.

“You saved us,” Ed says.

Lorraine returns the praise: “You believed in me.”

Then Ed gives the cross hanging around his neck to Janet.

“This has kept me safe since I was a kid,” he tells her.

Even if the Warrens’ stories have some validity, moviegoers will experience more Hollywood than holy work. The two films’ few casual references to God and faith don’t stand a ghost of a chance competing with hours of skin-crawling entertainment.