The Conjuring 2

James Wan’s 2016 film rests on a case that began in Enfield, north London, in 1977. The people who actually watched that house for two years were Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair; the Warrens merely visited. Playfair wrote that Ed Warren tried to convince him money could be made from the affair by writing books and selling film rights. Putting the visitors at the centre instead of the men who did the work is not a small liberty. The figure everyone remembers was added afterwards. The demonic nun was not there during the shoot; the original design was a winged creature, and Wan replaced it in additional photography in March 2016, casting Bonnie Aarons. That is why she sits on the Enfield story like something bolted on. Wan builds his fear from long takes and what stays outside the frame. He filmed Javier Botet as the Crooked Man in slow motion and played it backwards, preferring old camera tricks to computers. The emotional weight sits with the couple: the Elvis song Patrick Wilson plays on a guitar runs longer than the mechanics of the haunting. For a viewer who accepts long takes and treats an invented nun as set dressing. Not for one who wants Enfield reported faithfully; the two men who were really there have been written out.