Movie Review: The Conjuring 2 [2016]

“This one still haunts me.”       

 

Set in 1977, The Conjuring 2 sees world-famous paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren travel across the pond to the dilapidated North London suburb of Enfield to uncover the secrets behind a string of spooky hauntings plaguing one particular family.  

I made a huge mistake, you guys. I thought I could do it; I thought I'd be okay. But I went too far this time. I thought The Conjuring 2 wouldn't get me - after all I've seen two other horror movies this year! Surely it couldn't be that bad or any scarier than those. I thought that at the respectable age of 23, I'd be sorted.

I was wrong. The Conjuring 2 isn't just scary; it's shit-your-pants, cover-your-eyes, bite-your-knuckles and ignore-your-popcorn scary.

I think I say this every time I review a horror movie, but we'll go there anyway - horror ain't my thing. It's a genre that I always approach trepidatiously, primarily because 80% of the genre is the same warmed-up shit as before. You often get one decent movie followed by a string of money-grabbing sequels that rapidly diminish in quality - we're looking at you, all the other Paranormal Activity movies.

Every now and again you get something special - The Babadook or It Follows spring to mind. Joining this crop is James Wan's The Conjuring; the film was an enormous hit in 2013, grossing over $300 million from a $20 million budget. A sequel was all but assured - and thankfully, Wan has delivered a follow-up that is just as good, if not better than, the first.

The Conjuring 2 is set in 1977 and it relocates to Enfield in North London; an impoverished working class family, the Hodgsons, live in a dilapidated terrace house that they discover is haunted by an evil spirit. Taking possession of the Hodgsons' youngest daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe), the spirit refuses to let the family live in peace, and the paranormal case soon draws the attention of renowned investigators Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson).

Much like the first film, The Conjuring 2 will give you serious Exorcist or Amityville Horror vibes. Wan doesn't shy away from drawing parallels to such films either; its interwoven into the DNA of the movie without feeling like a straight-up rip-off or dull homage. Instead, we're treated to an exceptionally scary and atmospheric thriller that doesn't waste time getting down to business.

The setting was a nice change of pace also; the recreation of 70's London feels different from recent horror movies whilst remaining instantly familiar. However, I am going to start a petition to remove 'London Calling' from all movies from now on; it's such an overused track and using it is kinda lazy at this point (plus, the song wasn't released until 1979, two years after the events of the movie - so there).

Farmiga and Wilson are both excellent; their warm marital relationship is so effective that it makes the horrors unfolding around them extra terrifying. We don't just fear for their lives; we fear for their relationship and their future. They're really well-written too - and likeable! Having not seen the first movie in a long time, I wasn't expecting such warmth and depth from the Warrens, but there it was.

My biggest issue with the film is its length; when all is said and done, the film is knocking on for nearly two and a half hours, which wouldn't in itself be much of a problem if the first hour didn't spin its wheels so much. I get that Wan is doing everything he can to build tension, but it's well over an hour before the Warrens actually cross the pond and arrive in Enfield to meet the Hodgsons.

Credit where credit is due, the opening 60 minutes is a non-stop nightmare as Wan strings together terrifying scene after terrifying scene - I just preferred the second half of the movie where Lorraine and Ed started investigating the case and the plot actually got going.

The excellent craftsmanship is what really sets this movie apart; intelligent camerawork, editing, sound design and cinematography all intertwine to make this a horror movie experience to remember (and savour).

You know how I know? The morning after I saw The Conjuring 2, I'd agreed to drop my parents-in-law at the airport. They're flying to Sydney and then on to Japan. But their flight left at the crack of dawn, which meant waking up in the early hours of the morning. In the dark.

As soon as I stepped out of the safety of my bedroom and looked up at the darkened bathroom mirror and shadowy hallway corners, I knew I wouldn't shake the imagery Wan had crafted for a long, long time. Every tiny shadow lurking in the hallway was a ghoul waiting to eat my face; every minute movement across the wall was a demon about to haunt my dreams. Deep breaths Rhys, it isn't real...

I think that's my horror quota fulfilled for a while, don't you?

The Verdict: 8.5/10

Terrific performances and sublime filmmaking technique work in tandem to create The Conjuring 2, the best (and scariest) horror movie I've seen in a long time - it isn't just a great sequel, it's a great movie, period. Wan is a peerless master of modern horror.

 

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2016

Moving too slowly towards an ASEAN Economic Community

14 October 2014

Author: Jayant Menon, Asian Development Bank

Launched as a political bloc and security pact in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, ASEAN has evolved to embrace an ambitious economic agenda. Its latest project is to establish the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 31 December 2015. But is this likely? The blueprint for achieving the goal envisages the AEC standing on four pillars and meeting the deadline depends on progress on each of them.

There have been a number of noteworthy achievements on the first pillar of realising a single market and production base. The greatest success has been in tariff reduction. Following the implementation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area, common effective preferential tariff rates between the ASEAN-6 (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) fell to virtually zero. As a result, more than 70 per cent of intra-ASEAN trade incurs no tariff and less than 5 per cent is subject to tariffs above 10 per cent. With tariff rates largely irrelevant, leaders need to prioritise eliminating non-tariff barriers.

Some progress has been made in trade facilitation and investment liberalisation. The National Single Window — a one-stop shop to speed customs clearance — has gone live in the ASEAN-6. In addition, these economies now approximate international best practice in investment liberalisation. But the four newer ASEAN members — Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam — lag in both areas.

Trade in services has seen less liberalisation partly because it has a much shorter history than trade in goods and is harder to grasp. Agreements have been finalised to mutually recognise qualifications for some services, but the number of such services needs to be expanded and agreements need to be implemented in ways that improve mobility for skilled labor.

To achieve the second pillar of a highly competitive economic region, competition policy needs to be improved and the protection of intellectual property rights strengthened. These are difficult areas to reform. Questions remain regarding how effective a regional approach can be compared with national action or a multilateral approach. Standards harmonisation and regulatory convergence may offer considerable benefits to ASEAN as it develops its regional market. But developments with the ASEAN+6 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) may supersede this.

To achieve the third pillar of equitable economic development, the huge income and development disparities among ASEAN members must be addressed. Such disparities are inconsistent with the idea of economic community, however conceived. The Initiative for ASEAN Integration is one of several arrangements that have been proposed to help close the development gap and accelerate the integration of newer members. While such initiatives may be helpful, progress must come from within the newer members themselves as they institute broad economic reform that promotes trade and investment — as they have been doing.

The fourth pillar of full integration into the global economy has seen the greatest strides, which has enabled a thriving ‘Factory ASEAN’. Progress to date underlines how liberalisation has been driven more by market forces and unilateral actions than by regional agreements. ASEAN’s long-standing commitment to openness is one of its defining features and needs to be burnished to sustain and advance regionalism in Southeast Asia.

Each of the four pillars presents a demanding set of challenges to be met before the AEC can be fully realised. One challenge that cuts across the four pillars is achieving greater engagement with the private sector and the broader community. The AEC may be led by governments, but it cannot succeed without fully engaging business and the public at large. Efforts to prepare the private sector have enjoyed negligible success and public awareness is equally abysmal. This needs to change quickly if the AEC is to make a difference.

Although ASEAN has come a long way toward realising its goal, the challenges that remain suggest that the AEC will not meet its approaching deadline. The AEC Scorecard, ASEAN’s self-assessment mechanism, suggests that the region achieved only 76.5 per cent of the AEC targets that were due by March 2013. The AEC Scorecards further reveal that the pace of reform seems to have slowed, partly because the process has reached the more difficult parts of the reform agenda. Even if the pace picked up now and ASEAN managed to hit its remaining targets, the real test for the community would lie beyond 2015.

Accommodating AEC accords will not be easy when they require changes to domestic laws or even the national constitution. The flexibility that characterises ASEAN cooperation, the celebrated ‘ASEAN way’, may hand member states a convenient pretext for non-compliance. How to enforce the accords remains an issue. If the AEC is to be more than a display of political solidarity, ASEAN must find a way to give the commitments more teeth. The 2015 deadline should be viewed not as the final destination but as a milestone on the slow and long journey towards the AEC.

Jayant Menon is Lead Economist at the Office of Regional Economic Integration,Asian Development Bank, and Adjunct Fellow at the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, the Australian National University.

The views expressed in this paper draw upon the ADB-ISEAS publication, The ASEAN Economic Community: A Work in Progress, but are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Asian Development Bank, its Board of Governors or the governments they represent.

Response

Responding to an article Given that there have been so many wars in Vietnam, it might be possible to consider August 8, 1967 – the day ASEAN was founded – as being in the “aftermath of the Vietnam War.” But, since it was a successor organization to the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), which dates back to 1961, the idea that either group was a response to what we usually think of as the Vietnam War is a bit of a stretch. It was more of a response to China than Vietnam.

          The Vietnam War comment caught my attention too since 1967 was the middle of the war. But as the author said, that’s not really important.

I think education on Asean and what is actually happening is a problem. Talk about missed opportunities.

Yesterday I was looking at the schedule of specific commitments for the Asean Framework Agreement in Services (AFAS). Thailand’s 5th package of commitments for the Limitations on Market Access, under the sector Tourism and Travel Related Services, for Mode 3, Thailand put “None” on Hotel Lodging Services. Someone from an Asean country could have opened a hotel and had 100% ownership under this agreement. Thailand and has since fixed this in the 8th Package of Commitments.

Point being, not enough is being done to educate people on what is agreed to so they can take advantage of the AEC.

          I’ve read the ASEAN Declaration and no where in it does it say it was “launched as a political bloc and security pact in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.”

In fact, one of the founders,THANAT KHOMAN, wrote in 1992, “Another principle to which we anchored our faith was that our co-operation should deal with non-military matters. Attempts were made by some to launch us on the path of forming a military alliance. We resisted; wisely and correctly we stuck to our resolve to exclude military entanglement and remain safely on economic ground.”