After a confusing and unnecessary prologue in the Amityville house, the action cuts to Enfield in 1977, where the inhabitants of a damp and dingy – yet abnormally spacious – council house are being troubled by a poltergeist whose aim is to “hear them scream”. Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor with a Dick Van Dyke accent) is a long-suffering single mum with four kids who’ve been recently abandoned by their deadbeat dad. With no money to even buy biscuits, the last thing she needs to deal with is the ghost of a nasty old man who likes moving her furniture in an inconsiderate manner (more often than not, it breaks before reaching its destination) and possessing her youngest daughter Janet. The police, a group of psychical researchers and even some TV reporters all take a look inside the Hodgson house and raise the haunting’s profile, so eventually the church calls in the Warrens in from America to stay at the house and find out if the it’s real or not… While the first film was hardly subtle, it knew where to draw a line to keep its scares the right side of effective. This one, however, overplays everything and not in a fun audacious way either. It just takes its good ideas and drives them off a cliff, time and time again. For example, the Crooked Man zoetrope (this film’s obligatory yet inexplicable Victorian-style toy) and the dog bell both seem like strong setups for the kind of inventive scares The Conjuring pulled off so well but the payoff is bewildering; a Burton-esque CGI dogman hybrid in a candy striped suit that stomps all over the screen like it’s escaped from Night At The Museum. Likewise, the characterisation takes a similar trajectory. There’s a scene where Ed sings an Elvis song with the Hodgsons to bring everyone together and, when it starts, it’s a rare moment of levity; warm, funny and tender. Then it’s smothered with a string section that swells and swells until any emotion is lost beneath the heavy-handed soundtrack schmaltz. Joseph Bishara’s score is irrationally bombastic throughout in fact, and the use of use of contemporary (or thereabouts!) music is so hysterically on-the-nose it’s hard not to laugh. There is an opening montage of the local tourist sights set to The Clash’s London Calling and then – with just a few cor blimeys in between – it cuts straight to a bus stop, while playing Bus Stop by The Hollies, in case we still weren’t sure we were in Britain. Ultimately, between the first Conjuring, the Annabelle film and three Insidious chapters (also Wan-directed or produced), this format seems exhausted. There’s nothing here we’ve not seen done before and better. From the possessed kids to the pale-faced demons to the creepy use of a corny old vaudeville tune, what once was fresh now feels stock and predictable. Even the way that Lorraine is investigating one haunting (the Enfield Poltergeist) while having ominous visions of a different one (some kind of demon nun that looks like Marilyn Manson) is exactly what happens with Lin Shaye’s character in Insidious 3. I hate to make the obvious gag but if there’s going to be another Conjuring, it may be time they learned a few new tricks… The Conjuring 2 is in UK cinemas now.