London in the 70s is what Wan had a chance to recreate in The Conjuring 2 (2016), and I think this challenge --to present Enfield and the Warrens home, as well as, flaunt era knick knacks, wardrobe, house designs, streets, language, television, equipment tech, and hair--was especially exciting to him. Similarly in The Conjuring (2014), Wan is allowed to take the spook show back to the 70s where he can go retro and return an audience to the past. Influences are right there. It is no surprise that Amityville makes an appearance. The nun demon could be this sequel's clapping hands of the previous film. It does go the "child in peril" and "possessed child" routes to tug at our sympathies and offers a premonition involving Ed Warren potential death, seen through the clairvoyance of Lorraine. So when Ed goes into O'Connor's cellar, flooded with water due to a valve leak, you wonder if this will be the moment he perishes. There's Ed's entering the house that was under siege by Valik, holding the child hostage in her Enfield home while everyone else is kept from getting inside, with hot steam nearly blinding him and a bolt of lightning striking a tree, resulting in a edge awaiting a possible exit from a second story window. The film knows how to offer enough peril to keep us guessing, but, ultimately, it goes where we expect. The relief that allows us to exhale. Still, the spectre of Bill Wilkins, speaking in his voice through the child, is a genuine chill, and the nun demon has a sinister look, with that insidious plot to take total control of an innocent making Valik a definite creeper.
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