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★★★★☆ Highly Recommended!
A blockbuster, terror epic of a ghost story but lacking the near perfect, raw potency of the original film.
This is largely due to the design choices for its main antagonist, Valak the demon that terrorizes the Hodgson family. One of its manifestations, ’The Crooked Man’ is very much a modern creature/character design. The sequence in itself is visually stunning, played beautifully by an actual character actor, but grievously misplaced in the film’s 70s setting. It also doesn’t help that Valak’s demonic nun impression bears a striking resemblance to Marilyn Manson.
That being said, there’s still plenty of original scares thanks to James Wan’s slow but sure ascent to modern ‘Master of Horror’ status. Now, if only he would stop being distracted by fast cars and aquatic superheroes.
