The Conjuring 2’s basic story is of the Hodgson family being haunted by a demon known as Valak. The movie is exceptionally scary because the director, James Wan is a master of horror movies.  Wan's horror movies blow any other movie out of the water. This is because Wan does not rely on cheap jump scares, but building up tension. The Conjuring 2 is a better horror movie than others because it scares its audience by building tension, it’s horrifying characters, and its visual effects.

Let’s be honest, horror movies these days are just jumpscare, after jumpscare. After 10 minutes the audience begins to expect the scars and lose interest. One scene at the beginning of the movie has two little girls Margaret and Janet Hodgson playing with a homemade Ouija Board. The girls try to contact their deceased father, soon after the lights go out in the room and all that can be seen is an outline of someone’s face in the corner. At this point the audience believes that a demon from the Ouija Board is in the corner. The lights turn back on and a poster is in the corner of the room. This one scene put down the foundation for what was to come for the rest of the movie. Toward the middle of the movie, Billy is sleeping and is awoken to a sound coming from his small makeshift playhouse he has set up in the hallway. He opens the door but does not see anything, he proceeds to try and go back to bed, but this time his toy fire truck rolls out of the playhouse towards him. He does this three times, each time the audience expecting something to happen. When Billy pushes the truck back in for fourth time, he is met with a loud bang, and a blood curdling scream.The Conjuring 2 has a terrifying selection of monsters and demons to scare the audience with. The first one to appear and to some the least scary is Bill Wilkins. Bill appears as an old man, with little hair, and a pale complexion. Bill was the last person who lived in the house before the Hodgsons moved in. While trying to show the priest that Janet is actually possessed, Ed Warren conducts an interview with possessed Janet. Bill morphs in the background and says that he loves tormenting the family, and he wants his house back. Later that day, the family locks Janet in a room full of crosses, the family tries to sleep only to be woken up by the sound of Janet being attacked. Ed gets part of the door open, but fails due to the chains on the door, Janet's face appears in the open part of the door begging for help. Bill then appears and grabs Janet and disappears into the darkness. While Bill is a scary figure to see, he does not compare to the other monsters in this movie. The Hodgsons family tries to escape Bill by going to the neighbors house, this change stops the occurrences from happening for a while. The second night, the youngest, Billy wakes once again to hear a music box in the hallway and the dog laying down next to it. The music then becomes distorted and changing the song completely. The dog howls, and begins to pop and lock, the audience can only see the outline of the dog getting bigger. The dog had transformed into the movies second antagonist, The Crooked Man. The Crooked Man is a figure that only Billy can see as it only targeted him for this small part of the movie. He appears as a thin man, almost seven feet, in a pink suit and purple hat with glasses. At first sight he does not appear scary at all, then he gets up close to billy and smiles at him revealing his set of razor sharp teeth. When we think of characters from our childhood, we think of friendly characters who help each other. This movie takes this and uses it against the audience. By taking a beloved children's character and turning him into a demon. Finally, the most terrifying demon of this movie, the mastermind behind all of the suffering in this movie is Valak the Nun. At the first sight of Valak in the hallway of the Warren’s house, a five second scene shows how intimidating this demon is. Valak appears as a nun dressed in all black, with a white complexion. While the other two had more detail to them to make them scary, Valak character design is simple but terrifying. The most notable features of Valak are her size and height. She is close to seven foot and fat. Even though she is only in a few scenes in the movie, when you see her you immediately feel overwhelmed, and short of breath. What makes Valak so scary is that she show no emotion at all. Bill and the Crooked Man smile and show anger, but Valak just sits there staring blankly at your soul.

The visual effects of this movie are well done. While the movie relies mainly on costumes and makeup, the visual effects do make their marks on it. The Crooked Man would not have been in this movie without the use of visual effects. The best scene in this movie that uses visual effects is the painting scene. Ed and Lorraine Warren are a ghost hunter couple that help the Hodgson family during their crisis. Before the Warrens didn't believe in the Hodgsons case and thought that they were lying. Until Ed has a dream of Valak. Lorraine walks into the lounge and sees Ed painting the picture of Valak he saw in his dream. Lorraine is shocked and freezes on the spot.What Lorraine hasn't told Ed is that she has seen Valak before during a previous case they worked on. Later on Lorraine is reading a bible while her daughter is playing, her daughter leaves the room to see Valak down the hall. (First time we ever see Valak in the movie) Lorraine follows Valak into the lounge where she sees the painting of Valak hanging on the wall. The door locks behind Lorraine and she is trapped with Valak. Then in the most terrifying and memorable scene in the movie. A shadow appears on the wall and slowly goes along the wall behind the painting. A pause happens and you see these long fingers appear from behind the painting beginning to grip it. Another pause happens and the eyes and mouth of the painting open and it dash's towards Lorraine. These scene left people scared at how well shot and how good the visual effects of it was.

The Conjuring 2 outshines all other horror movies due to the fact that it's actually scary. There are very few jumpscares in this movie and the ones that you see are meant more for laughs rather than to actually scare you. James Wan knows how to scare people by building tension. The demons in the movie are intimidating and the visual effects accompany them well.