Opiniões dos críticos

That Wan doesn't ultimately do much with the sociological stuff isn't surprising, but the best horror movies root their cliches in something authentic. Despite ending with a slideshow that puts vintage photographs of the Warrens and Hodgsons alongside their onscreen avatars, The Conjuring 2 is ersatz all the way.

For an hour the film is great – then, increasingly, less so. It's not just the over-enthusiastic bits of English-working-class local colour, more a case of the horrors becoming too literal. It's not scary when the ‘crooked man' from the kids' nursery rhyme comes to life as a spindly boogeyman, or when the deep spectral voice turns out to belong to a grumpy old codger, now deceased. The second half is both too flabby and increasingly daft.

The film captures a sense of that ominousness—until Wan becomes distracted, throwing in dozens of other things that don't need to be there, and repeating certain effects (a grouch-spirit growling "This is my house") so many times that they lose their potency. In the end, the effect is more one of boredom than terror. But there are still some out-there elements in The Conjuring 2 that are just odd enough to startle and surprise, and sometimes they're not even the scariest things.

The film mostly justifies the bloat, because Wan's style is wonderfully energized and nimble, with a camera that roves quickly, sometimes madly, toward danger and a restless escalation of stakes. He also has legitimately compelling lead characters in Ed and Lorraine, whose profession and marriage the movies take seriously, even if the real world received them more skeptically.

Despite the intelligent craftsmanship, there's no doubting that this is a big commercial movie riddled with overindulgence. But it's littered with appealing moments. Coming off the absurd action set pieces of "Furious 7," Wan goes for the gusto with a grab bag of familiar tricks.

It attempts to fold a few broad thematic concepts—media hysteria about demonic possession, the sanctification of the Warrens' faith in both God and the paranormal, maybe an assumed critique of the British public housing system under Tory rule—into its breakneck final act, but most of these ideas are undercut by the film's haphazard structure.

The streamlined elements of the first have now given way to mind-numbing clutter. If before Wan stripped down each set piece to its essentials — a roving camera, a patch of darkness, a fearful face, paralyzing silence — now he has thuds and booms and shadows and shaking furniture and screaming characters all competing for our attention.