The Witch aside, the first few months of 2016 haven’t been kind to horror fans. From The Forest to The Boy, witless and largely worthless chillers have come and gone without leaving so much as a bad dream in their wake. So it’s relieving to get a jolting reminder of what good horror should look like with the first trailer for The Conjuring 2, James Wan’s much-anticipated follow-up to the 2013 frightener.
Expanding on the pitch-perfect teaser, the full-length preview (above) elegantly lays out the scary story on display this time around. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are back in the roles of renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren – but while the first film was set in a haunted house in 1971 Rhode Island, the sequel finds them traveling to England on the trail of an elusive spirit called The Enfield Poltergeist. Of course, their quarry doesn’t want to go quietly – it already has its supernatural claws out for a single mother (Frances O’Connor) and her four children (including Lauren Esposito, Patrick McAuley and Benjamin Haigh).
Maria Doyle Kennedy, Franka Potente, Simon Delaney, and Simon McBurney co-star.
There’s no shortage of hair-raising imagery in the trailer, but going into specifics doesn’t seem all that necessary when you can witness all of Wan’s terrifying new tactics in the above trailer, spoiler-free.
The Conjuring 2 (which appears to have dropped its subtitle, The Enfield Poltergeist) opens June 10.
“Director James Wan brings this supernatural thriller to the screen with another real case from the files of renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Reprising their roles, Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson star as Lorraine and Ed Warren, who, in one of their most terrifying paranormal investigations, travel to north London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by malicious spirits.”
