There’s no shortage of shocks in the “The Conjuring 2,’’ a mostly satisfying follow-up that brings back the excellent Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real-life paranormal experts most famous for investigating “The Amityville Horror’’ house.
Returning director James Wan teases us with a five-minute pre-credits prologue depicting one of Lorraine’s demonic encounters in Amityville in 1976 — five years after the case in the first “Conjuring’’ — so unnerving to Lorraine that she begs Ed to hang up their crucifixes for a while.
Meanwhile, in the London borough of Enfield, 11-year-old Janet Hodgson (a very good Madison Wolfe) is showing signs of possession — including levitation and speaking in the very creepy voice of an old dead man who wants her family out of the grim public housing unit where he formerly lived. It’s even scarier than Margaret Thatcher on the telly.
–– ADVERTISEMEN