10 Surprisingly Great Movies From Summer 2016
3. The Conjuring 2
What We Expected: A perfunctory sequel that mines decent work out of Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson but largely coasts on the success of the original, rehashing its core narrative while failing to carve out a distinct personality for itself, and inevitably setting up a third film of course.
What We Got: A rare horror sequel that damn-near matches what came before it, touting an entertaining new setting and daring to dig down deep with its characters for an arguably overlong 134 minutes but in turn investing us deeply in these people.
Farmiga and Wilson are terrific as expected, though it's young Madison Wolfe who runs away with the movie as protagonist Janet. James Wan directs the hell out of it as you'd hope for, and in introducing the demon Nun character, gives horror its most memorably horrifying villain in quite some time. Just try and forget that damn painting scene.
On the strength of this, The Conjuring 3 doesn't seem like such a bad idea.