The Conjuring 2

How much one enjoys James Wan’s latest scarefest, The Conjuring 2, depends on one’s appetite for the earnest ridiculousness of the “true tales of demon possession” genre. I don’t exactly crave them though I do enjoy a good jolt that comes with the gravitas of endnotes. C2 has plenty of jolts –maybe too many – and a final 10 minutes that are both intense and maddeningly contrived. It’s literally spiritualist Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) telling husband Ed (Patrick Wilson) “don’t go into the basement,“ which he does, of course. Still, you pull for the ghost hunters and the north London family whose house is crawling with pissed off poltergeists and whose younger daughter (Madison Wolfe) – a true screamer – is channeling the undead.