It’s several months since the Lutz’s fled their home and the Warrens are here to prove the hauntings authenticity. Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) sits at a table with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and a bunch of unimportant people. She tells them to imagine themselves in a glowing light for protection. She tells no one else this and I feel like there are others that need this protection more. Like perhaps haunted children. But fine protect only these randos.
Lorraine appears in the Further. Different franchise, yes, but what can I tell you? That’s where we are. She wanders the house, following in Ronnie DeFeo’s footsteps the night he murdered his entire family. She’s snapped out of her trance by the appearance of a ghost child beckoning her to the basement. Against all better judgement and self preservation, she follows. Once there, he is joined by all the family ghosts and they point to a covered mirror, implying that Lorraine should uncover it. You don’t have to do everything a ghost asks Lorraine. But she does.
She sees a nun (Bonnie Aarons) standing behind her. She turns and sees nothing. We do this back and forth with the mirror a few times. Each time she turns back to the mirror, the nun is closer to her until finally the nun appears in the real world and strangles her. Lorraine breaks free and sees a vision of Ed impaled on a broken tree. She screams.
Obligatory crawl informing us this is based on a true story and the most terrifying case the Warrens have ever seen. These get less effective every time they’re shown.
Prepare to be backhanded by the concept of England. English cars, music, people, landmarks. There will be no confusion that Toto is not in America anymore. I probably would have figured this out by all the English accents, but this works too. We meet the Hodgkin children, Janet (Madison Wolfe), Margaret (Lauren Esposito), Billy (Benjamin Haigh), and Johnny (Patrick Auley). Honestly, we see Johnny so rarely, I thought he was a ghost kid at one point.
They head home, where their mom Peggy (Frances O’Conner) is worried about finances since their father left. He doesn’t even pay child support. Janet shows Margaret the Ouija Board she made and they play. This doesn’t work, so she shoves it under her bed.
Buuuut that night Janet wakes up by the living room chair. And Margaret wakes to pounding on the bedroom door. She opens it, but no one is there. It’s a solid 30 seconds before Janet appears, but Margaret still blames her for the knocking. That makes all the sense, Margaret. I’m going to give her a pass since I too am not functional when unexpectedly woken.
The next night Janet and Billy are playing with a zoetrope. It’s kind of a neat toy that you’ll never not hate after watching this movie. Billy’s eating biscuits (cookies) that Peggy told him like yesterday they couldn’t afford, so I guess she stole them and she warns him not to eat them all because he will wake up in the middle of the night thirsty. He obviously eats all the cookies. He isn’t made of restraint.
Turns out he wakes up thirsty. He goes downstairs to get a drink, and the swing is moving on its own outside. Janet is having an aggressive nightmare. Margaret sees her talking back and forth with herself and even doing the voice for her nightmare friend. Thinking her sister is having a night terror, she puts her back to bed. No sooner does this poor girl lie back down than she is woken by Janet screaming over her. Apparently, her ghost/demon friend is playing with Billy.
Billy is running back upstairs, so focused he doesn’t notice there’s some random dude in the living room chair. Probably for the best. One of his toy cars rolls out of his hallway tent. (Why is he allowed to keep this thing up? They have like no space.) He walks it back to the tent and pushes it in. Someone pushes it back out and screams at him. He wakes his mom, but she thinks he just had a bad dream. Until she hears something downstairs.
It’s just Janet. She’s sleeping in the spooky, clearly haunted, chair. She’s sleepwalking and has a fever, so Peggy has her stay home from school the next day. Janet spends her day off watching TV in the same room as that evil chair. It’s fine until the ghost dude decides he wants to watch the news and steals the remote to change the channel. Janet does not want to watch the queen and keeps having to search for the remote to change it back. The next time it changes, she finds the remote ON THE CHAIR.
No way. Girl hasn’t moved from the couch a solid 3 feet away. She changes it back, but now the whole thing goes to static and finally turns off. In the reflection, she sees the man in the chair behind her. He creeps up behind her and screams, ‘My house!’
We quickly check in on the Warrens. Ed is painting the nun from Lorraine’s vision. She takes one look at it and tells him they are taking no more cases. Give it about 5 minutes.
Tonight Janet ties herself to the bed. She figures this will keep her from sleepwalking. One, I’m not sure that’s how this whole things works. Two, that’s how you die in a house fire. She wakes up in the middle of the night on the floor. Still in her bedroom, so maybe she was right about tying herself up. She hears the pounding this time and opens the door to…nothing. It’s always nothing. The lights aren’t working, so she grabs a flashlight and heads downstairs.
She checks on that creepy chair, and it looks normal. But before we can relax, it starts to rock. Janet runs back to her room, slams the door, and even blocks it with a chair. Points for effort. It won’t help, though. Soon she hears the door open and boom, the chair is right next to her bed now. She goes right under the covers, but our demon doesn’t like that and rips them off of her. Her screaming finally wakes up Margaret. Both beds bounce around and now everyone is screaming. This wakes up Peggy.
She comes in to find out what in the world is happening. Of course, she hones in on the Ouija Board and assumes they scared themselves. Thankfully, this demon doesn’t mess around and sends a dresser flying across the room before the girls can even protest their innocence. The whole family bolts to the neighbors’ house.
They actually call the cops for this one. I’m impressed. Peggy goes over with the neighbor Vic (Simon Delany) to tell them what happened. Again this demon does not mess around. It makes noises and then moves a chair around in front of the cops. They are not equipped for this, so they leave. Thankfully, the one offers to send over a priest. For a minute, I thought they were really just going to abandon them.
Checking back in on the Warrens, Lorraine and Judy are chilling in the living room when Judy feels a disturbance in the force. Lorraine notices and follows her daughter. Judy is staring at something. It’s the nun. Lorraine follows the nun like she’s some kind of super evil cat that won’t leave you alone until you see what they want to show you. Turns out the nun wants her to see Ed’s office. That man hung up his spooky nun painting. That’s the vibe he’s going for here.
The nun plays a little Christmas music because this is actually a Christmas movie and I didn’t notice until now. Lorraine watches as a nun shaped shadow floats along the walls until it reaches the painting. It grabs the edge of the painting and charges Lorraine. She comes too in the basement of Amityville. The nun shows her Ed’s death again, get some new material, and Lorraine scribbles in her bible.
The press are swarming the Hodgkins house. It’s been a media circus after the police report was filed. The family is interviewed on camera with a Paranormal Reasearcher, Mr. Grosse (Simon McBurney). He asks if there is anything that wants to speak with them and it’s Janet, but not Janet, who responds. In a creepy voice, she tells the group she is Bill Wilkins, 72 years old, and that she died of a brain hemorrhage in, and this will shock you, the spooky chair.
The Hodgkins are still sleeping over at the neighbors. In the empty Hodgkins house, the zoetrope starts up on its own. The crooked man disappears from the toy. Billy wakes up across the street, hearing the dog ringing a bell. He goes to let the dog out, but that dog is not okay. Billy notices this and the dog morphs into the crooked man. Boy, is he creepy. Billy books it back to the living room where everyone is sleeping. They all hear the crooked man headed toward them. He rounds the corner, and it’s just Janet. Things in the room fly through the air and break. Janet falls to the floor, convulsing. This is the moment the neighbors decided Janet couldn’t stay there anymore. They don’t say it now, but this is the moment.
The church brings the recording of scary-voiced Janet to the Warrens. Basically, the church thinks this girl is haunted, but it doesn’t want to get involved in the media circus it’s become and potentially look bad. Wow. Lorraine agrees to go, even though she just told Ed she was done with cases. She finally tells him that she saw his death. She makes Ed promise that if there is anything dangerous happening, they will leave. They will not leave.
Mr. Grosse picks them up at the airport and is way too excited about this family’s haunting. The Warrens are staying at the Hodgkins with Peggy and Janet (see she was banned) meanwhile all the other kids are still at the neighbors. Janet’s old room is now absolutely covered in crosses donated by the community. They still hear lots of banging and the room is trashed, so I’d say it isn’t working. Lorraine tries to talk to Janet, but she isn’t very chatty. She does say that the ghosts talk to her and right now they’re saying they want to hurt Lorraine.
Peggy shows Ed the problematic chair and said that they got all the furniture with the house. He asks about the dad. Turns out that guy is a real gem who ran off and had twins with someone in a town over. This makes sense to Ed. It’s the reason they are being haunted. All this emotional turmoil.
To test Janet’s possession, they have her drink water and ask to talk to Bill. Bill’s a little shy today, so he won’t talk unless they turn around. Janet is out of focus in the background but over time she turns into Bill, only turning back when Ed shows his cross necklace. It’s very tiny but affective in this instance. He said some odd things, but he’s old and a ghost, so no one thinks too much of it.
Everyone goes to bed in this horrible house. Lorraine hasn’t felt any presense which is crazy. This place is crawling with evil. Janet, to prove my point, wakes up on the ceiling in the kitchen. She sees Bill chilling in his usual chair. He walks upstairs and pulls her up through the floor and into her old bedroom. She’s locked inside as hundreds of small crosses turn upside down. This symbolizes that it’s demon time. Bill attacks her and she screams her head off.
Peggy can’t get the door open because it’s dead bolted. She can see in just a bit and sees Bill’s hands around Janet. Ed and Lorraine rush over and get the door open where Janet is alone but being choked by the curtains.
Now the skeptic, Anita (Franke Potente), believer, Mr. Grosse, and the Warrens discuss the case. They need proof for the church but so far nothing they’ve seen is 100%. The Warrens believe them. They plan to set up more cameras around the house.
Ed helps Peggy fix the washer. It is in the basement. The pipes are in at least 2 feet of standing water. This cannot be healthy. He wades into it without so much as rolling up his pants. That’s how you get sepsis. And probably diphtheria. Peggy notices something behind him. He turns, and it’s gone. A hand reaches up and pulls Peggy in. She gets free but has a bite on her hand. Ed digs around in the sesspool and finds dentures matching the bite.
Janet hears something in the kitchen and walks in. Johnny, finally getting a moment, goes in to confront what’s hurting his sister. He arrives to find all the knives stabbed into the table. Janet appears behind him with a knife. Ed and Peggy get back to find Johnny screaming and every single thing in the kitchen flying around. They walk in to find the kitchen wrecked and Janet missing. They find her impossibly shoved in a cupboard. She’s screaming nonsensical words.
Anita calls the Warrens over and shows that her cameras caught Janet faking the kitchen incident. I have no idea how that kid tossed a whole table, but that’s what the video shows. Lorraine still doesn’t feel anything, and the Warrens aren’t sure they believe.
Janet tells her family she faked the incident because the entity said that if she didn’t get everyone to leave, it would kill them all.
The Warrens are leaving. Ed drops the recordings and the cross each other. This gives him the idea of playing them together. Now we hear Bill say, ‘Help me. It won’t let me go.’ And suddenly Lorraine feels all the things. She finds Bill in the Further, where he explains that an evil demon won’t let him move on. Lorraine asks how they beat it and he answers with a riddle. Thanks for that Bill. They flag Vic down and get him to drive them back to the Hodgkins. In the car, they quickly figure out that what they need to defeat the demon is its name. So I guess the riddle was helpful.
Margaret and Janet are in the living room floating in the air when Peggy walks in. Janet has entered evil mode and flings her sister across the room. Peggy takes the non-possessed kids back to the neighbors so she can deal with this one. She can’t get back into her house when she returns. Vic, Ed, and Lorraine arrive to help. Ed gets in through the basement but it seals before anyone else can. Lorraine begs him to wait for her but he doesn’t
He breaks into the house through the floor and is blasted by hot air as he stands. He’ll be 60% blinded for the rest of this movie. He wanders pretty aimlessly and doesn’t see any of the spooky things because he isn’t seeing anything. He doesn’t see the crooked man hanging around and gets a little distracted by the tv. Janet calls out to him to help get him back on track.
Lorraine is just now remembering that time at the beginning of the movie when she scratched the ever loving crap out of her Bible. That arts and crafts project was her writing down the demon’s name. That’s pretty convenient. She finds it in the car and reads out the name. Valak. She says it aloud as a tree is struck by lightning and split. Hmm. Looks like that Ed killing tree in all her visions.
Ed makes it upstairs, and the zoetrope goes off, once again distracting Ed. He needs to learn to focus on the goal. The crooked man appears and creeps down the hallway at him. Ed finally finds Janet about to jump out the window right about that tree. He rushes after her and grabs her just in time. They are both precariously dangling from the curtain rod.
Vik, using a tiny tiny ax, makes enough headway with the door to allow Lorraine to fit through. She finds Ed and Janet immediately because she did not stop to watch TV or play with toys. She’s stopped from saving everyone by the demon nun. The nun’s looking pretty smug, but Lorraine does know her name. She shouts its name, sending it back to hell, I guess, and pulls everyone out of the window.
Everyone is mostly fine. Sure, they’re traumatized and will need therapy well into their 80s but they’re alive and the demons are gone. They apparently stay in this house forever and Peggy went on to die in the evil chair.
The Warrens put the zoetrope into their museum even though I’d have probably gone with Ed’s terrible painting. Annabelle is displayed prominently in the background because she just has to get involved in everything.
See you all next week for Annabelle Creation. It is better than it had any right to be. Thank god.
Donna is an author and engineer with 15 years of IT experience and a lifetime love of literature and cinema, especially horror. She has written a paranormal Holiday novel, What Creatures Are Stirring. She holds and Electrical Engineering Degree from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Western Governor’s University. Donna is passionate about reading and the importance of access to books. She loves writing about her favorite books and movies and sharing it with her readers.
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