James Wan, horror auteur and director of Insidious,
Insidious 2, The Conjuring and a bunch of the Saw movies, dropped two trailers
at the 2016 San Diego WonderCon this weekend. And I gotta say they both look
incredible.
The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist
It looks as though Ed and Lorraine Warren are
back at it again. The famous paranormal detectives travel to England to investigate
The Enfield Poltergeist, based on real events that hit the Hodgson family in
the late 70’s. Written by Wan, David Lee Johnson, Carey and Chad Hayes (Oregon
natives!) the quartet responsible for the first Conjuring film, with Patrick
Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprising their roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren (respectively),
I’m hoping that this sequel will further develop these two incredibly
fascinating characters, and carry the same emotional resonance and feelings of
desperation that helped make the first film so terrifying.
Lights Out
As the trailer for Lights Out tells you, you
were right to be afraid of the dark. After Rebecca(played by Teresa Palmer)
moves away from home, she comes back when she finds out that her little brother
Martin(played by Gabriel Bateman) is being haunted by the same nightmarish
presence that drove her to leave in the first place. It is revealed in the
trailer that this presence, in the form of a woman, is weirdly attached to
their mother (Maria Bello) and they have to keep their shit together long
enough to somehow survive this entity that seeks vengeance.
Lights Out is directed by David F. Sandberg, who wrote and directed the short film of the same name that Lights Out is based on. Although Sandberg has quite a number of short films under his belt, this will be his feature length debut. And while the premise of this film reminds me allot of the 2003 film Darkness Falls (directed by Johnathan Liebesman.) But I’m going to give this film the benefit of the doubt, and hope that Sandberg’s first feature flick will be as terrifying and inventive as the original short film.
Release date: July 22, 2016
Bonus
Lights Out short film (2013)
