How can the same director get it so wrong?

Rating: 3/10 (21 January 2020)

Firstly can I say that The Conjuring - the first movie, was one of the best haunted house movies I've seen, if not the best. While it brought little new to the genre, there is after all only limited scope for this, what it delivered was impeccable, and it avoided using manipulative "effects", visual and sound, in order to deliver its thrills.
The follow-up, "The Conjuring 2", by contrast manages to get everything wrong!
For starters in the original, while based on a "true story", i.e. the events in the movie were as reported and investigated by Ed & Lorraine, this is irrelevant - it adds little (unless you believe it's all real) and it certainly takes nothing away - the second movie makes it more of a mission statement. For background, the haunting was thoroughly investigated and plenty of evidence came to light that the girls were faking it - paranormal investigators were heavily criticised for accepting that some of the events WERE faked but still believing the haunting was real! The movie faithfully covered all of this and in doing so, destroyed the suspension of belief, viewers are asked to engage when watching this kind of movie. How can you believe the haunting is real, when the movie is showing you evidence it isn't? You end up viewing many of the events as totally laughable - it's rather like Scooby Doo in places!
Secondly, the original spent just the right amount of time setting the scene: letting you into the family's life so you like them, and then building up the suspense oh so slowly to the point you are desperate for Ed And Lorraine to get involved and help. The Conjuring 2 however runs two thread plots from the start, one set in England, and one set at the Warren's home - it's not clear at all if they interact, never mind how until the end of the movie. It tries to build up BOTH threads, but as a result it takes twice as long and you end up bored - not just that, but the constant chopping and changing ruins the effect. It's not until the last 30 mins of the 134 min long movie that the action begins and it's over in a trice with a frankly absurd plot suddenly sprung upon the viewer.
The setting is problematic, while a remote farmhouse with a foreboding tree next to a still lake gives a perfect background to a ghost story, a 70's council estate really doesn't. OK, so that's where the Enfield haunting occurred, but it makes it all less believable.
Finally, the shocks - yes I jumped a couple of times, but that was simply due to cheap effects. The movie isn't remotely scary, well maybe to young children it could be, but to an adult, it's more like pantomime. Nearly everything that is going to happen is predictable, the camera work if nothing else, telegraphs it.
The fact that we hardly got to know the family involved either since most of their lines were simply various types of screaming (yes, there's plenty of that - maybe to make up for the lack of it from the audience?), so it was difficult to care about whether anything happened to them anyway.
In short, while I awarded the first movie 8 and it may even rise to a 9 after a second viewing, this offering is total junk.