Movies
‘The Conjuring’ Sequel Tells of the Enfield Poltergeist?
A quick look over the iMDB page for The Conjuring sequel reveals which of the Warren’s haunting tales will get a big screen adaptation.
According to the site, which is often wrong, New Line Cinema’s sequel is titled The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist.
Insidious, Saw and The Conjuring‘s James Wan is returning to the director’s chair to tell of the “Enfield Poltergeist,” which took place at a council house in Brimsdown village, borough of Enfield, England during the late 1970s.
Here’s what Wiki has to say:
In August 1977, single parent Peggy Hodgson called police to her rented home in Enfield after two of her four children claimed that furniture was moving and knocking sounds were heard on walls. The children included Margaret, age 13, Janet, age 11, Johnny, age 10 and Billy, age 7. A female police constable saw a chair slide on the floor but couldn’t determine if it moved by itself or was pushed by someone. Later claims included allegedly demonic voices, loud noises, thrown rocks and toys, overturned chairs and levitation of children. Reports of further incidents in the house attracted considerable press attention and the story was covered in British newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, until reports came to an end in 1979.[1][2][3] On Halloween 2011, BBC News featured comments from a radio interview with photographer Graham Morris, who claimed that a considerable portion of the events were genuine
The site also alleges that, American paranormal investigator Ed Warren claimed that Janet was once “sound asleep, levitating in midair” and concluded that the children were the subject of demonic possession.
Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson return to star in The Conjuring 2, which haunts theaters June 10, 2016.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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