Editorials
Why ‘The Conjuring 2’ Made Me Cry
This month has been awful, and I mean awful. Two weeks ago I lost both of my jobs (in one day through, no fault of my own, and was given no explanation). Then, last week, as I was driving to an interview, I was basically run off the road, which left my car un-drivable. These things, coupled with the fact that I’m getting married in September, have really thrown me for a loop. In the 10+ years I’ve been working I’d never been fired before, and certainly not twice in one day. My ego is bruised, my stress levels are through the roof, and I haven’t written anything in a while. It sucks.
After a long couple weeks of lying around my apartment and filling out numerous applications and assessments, I had to get out and be a part of the world again, even if I didn’t want to. A friend and I went to see James Wan’s highly anticipated sequel, The Conjuring 2, and while I was expecting to enjoy it, I was not expecting to find love, happiness, and solace in it.
Admittedly, there’s not much that James Wan has done in horror that I haven’t enjoyed to some extent but his work chronicling the cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren have been his best. They’re scary with just enough humor sprinkled throughout to temporarily alleviate the exquisite dread that is built in each film. In short, I loved it. While I didn’t think it was as scary as the first, I found it to be a deeply immersive film with incredible set design, direction, and performances.
This isn’t a review or even an op-ed, I guess. It’s more of a letter or musing on Wan’s (and the writers’) ability to take characters, both fictional and real, and make the audience care about them. Further, it’s also about how horror can really help you remember what you’re most thankful for.
Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated countless cases and whether you believe they were actually fighting off supernatural evil or not doesn’t matter. What does matter is how these two are portrayed. Twice in the film, a story is told by both characters who’re brilliantly performed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. They are speaking to a girl who is being tormented by demonic spirits and has lost all of her friends because of it; it’s a tale is about finding the one person who believed them out of all the naysayers they had encountered over the years. It ends like this (spoiler):
“…You know what I did next?”
“What?”
“I married him…”
…or her, depending on who’s telling the story. At that point, while I sat in a dark theater, I felt my throat tighten and my eyes beginning to well up. “Am I going to cry during The Conjuring 2?,” I thought. I fought the tears and soon the next supernatural episode came and I was back to normal. But later on, during a scene in which Ed sings Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (to bring a bit of happiness to a terrified family), I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Patrick Wilson looked at Vera Farmiga in such a comforting and loving way that it made me entirely lose it. I sat and let the tears silently stream down my face because James Wan, Patrick Wilson, and Vera Farmiga reminded me how lucky I am to have my fiance, especially during these times.
The Conjuring 2 isn’t just about scaring us or bringing back the feeling of the great ghost films of decades past; it’s about showing the audience that bad things happen to good people, but they can also be fought off by the good as well…and that having at least one person who can be there for you, even at your very worst, is one of the best things that life can offer.
Did going to the movies make all my problems go away? No. Did it get me a job or fix my car? No. But for two hours, at the end of a really terrible couple of weeks, it reminded me that I am loved and lucky to have someone who believes me. And you know what I’ll do next?
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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