Yes it's been done before......and yes it's still very scary.

Rating: 10/10 (2 September 2016)

There are many reviews on here that try to tell us that we don't need these formulaic things, and that we have grown tired of the same old nonsense. That we crave something different. I'm here to say that those reviews should speak for themselves. I for one am a cinema goer and film watcher. When I go to see a particular type of film it's because I want to feel a certain way, whether that's excited, moved, horny or scared. Experience therefore tells me what to expect, but and here is the big but......it doesn't tell me how I'll receive it or when to receive it. In other words, I may well have seen it all before, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. After first watching The Conjuring, I loved it so much I watched two more times within a year. It was good old classic scare without the gore. I hoped they would make a 2nd one and was excited when it came round. The Conjuring 2 is more of the first but told in a different way, with different scares and different oh-dear-I-nearly-crapped-me-pants moments!! It's good old classic scares without the gore that peppers so many of what passes for today's horrors. It takes the same formulas that made the first one so good and adds a few more in for good measure. Its length allows the story to be told first from the the children's perspective and then adds in the main characters. For those that haven't seen the first one, we are given a brief synopsis of what they do and how they do it. Rather like the opening set piece of an action hero at the beginning of an action film. We are then taken on what I consider to be an emotional ride through the ordeal of the young girl. I felt for her, I really did. I felt for the mother who not only had to watch her children helplessly be tormented by the goings on the house, but also had her own worries of trying to keep her home and deal with the schools allegations of one of her children....all as a single mum. I felt for each if the girls siblings as they tried to do what they could to protect their sister from something they could not possibly explain. Then of course there's the two main characters battling their own demons as well as trying to save a family from theirs. The tension is built up through the bonds the viewer has formed for the main characters so that when the scares happen you feel like you're in the room with them. There's no obvious CGI, the sun isn't always shining and there are no obvious dispensable characters. It's a simple horror film that scared me witless.....more of the same please!!