As a filmmaker, James Wan plays to the reptile brain of his audience, orchestrating such autonomous body functions as heart rate, breath and goosebumps like a maestro.
In movies from Saw to Furious 7, and now The Conjuring 2, a sequel to his ghostly 2013 hit, the filmmaker bypasses higher brain function, plugging directly into the peanut-shaped circuit board - buried deep beneath your to-do lists - that makes you jump out of your skin when you hear a loud noise.
If The Conjuring 2 is not quite the achievement of the original(and what sequel is?), it nevertheless manifests a canny understanding of what modern audiences expect from a ghost story, delivering slowly mounting dread, punctuated by alternating bursts of terror and laughter.
Set in 1977 England, and inspired by events that have come to be known as the Enfield Haunting(from the North London borough in which they took place), the film centers on a working-class family of five. Single mother Peggy Hodgson(Frances O’Connor) and her four children are terrorized by the ghost of a former occupant of their shabby house, Bill Wilkins(Bob Adrian), after her youngest daughter, 11-year-old Janet Hodgson(Madison Wolfe), opens the door to the underworld by messing around with a Ouija board.