Insidious: Chapter 2 Review

Friday the 13th has always been a traditionally strong opening weekend for horror films, and just a few months after the surprising success of “The Conjuring”, James Wan has struck once again with yet another horror flick in Insidious: Chapter 2, an unnecessary sequel that arrives with a noticeable dip in quality and a frustrating lack of genuine scares.

One of the more hard-working horror directors of the last decade, Wan first landed a major hit with “Saw”, launching a franchise that dragged interminably on for a total of six subsequent sequels that ranged from the mediocre to the abysmal. And now it appears that Wan has found the beginnings of a new franchise that can be made on the cheap and consistently turns a profit in an industry fraught with financial risk. Regrettably, while Wan’s films do achieve a modicum of box office success at each go around, he has yet to make a genuinely effective and scary horror film to rival the classics of the past. Aside from the decent “The Conjuring” and the simplistic yet effective “Saw”, Wan’s efforts have always been a mixed bag and he has definitely gone in the wrong direction with Insidious: Chapter 2. 

In the second chapter, the story begins almost directly from where the first film ended, as the Lambert family continues to be tormented by a malignant evil entity that has followed them from the other side.  With son Dalton rescued from “The Further” but father Josh (Wilson) now possessed by the evil entity, the entire cast is back for the sequel; even the zany paranormal activity assistants and their bizarrely misplaced and unwelcome attempts at comic relief are back again. And with chief paranormal activist Elise now dead, the search continues on with the survivors to figure out the mystery behind Josh’s possession. 

Disappointingly, the film fails to be unsettling or scary in general for the most part. While they are not as monotonous or as non-existent storywise as the awful Paranormal Activity series, the Insidious movies are far from effective horror and share many of the same flaws. To the film’s detriment, Wan really ramps up the generic scare factor. Generic scares are cheaply won, rarely built up or earned and fail to be set up or established earlier on for the most part. They are simply designed to make you jump out of your seat with the sudden appearance of something unexpected or by following a period of quiet silence with a sudden incredibly loud noise. While they do jolt or startle you, they do not scare you when there’s nothing else beyond that one brief jolting moment. And Insidious 2 is just chock full of such generic scares. The viewer has to slog through the interminable opening 40 minutes of this film as we go through a repetitive cycle of brief exposition, an encounter with a spirit, and a “scary” jolting moment over and over and over again until things finally get going at the very end. 

The main problem Insidious: Chapter 2 suffers from is that the peril and tension in this film is entirely lacking. We wait impatiently as the spirits go through what has become at this point the customary routine of sporadically haunting people with no real aim or purpose, and the fact that those who have already watched the first film know that Josh is possessed takes away a lot of the mystery early on. This second chapter lacks a clear and effective driving narrative force to move things along and the main driver of events in the first film, Dalton, plays no significant part in the proceedings until the very end. The film also lacks a clear main protagonist; Patrick Wilson filled that spot the last time but he is more or less uninvolved for a large portion of this story. Wilson, in his third Wan horror movie in the last two years, does have an ever so slightly edgier role this time but is still at risk of becoming typecast in playing such bland characters so frequently. 

Truth be told, Wan appears to be successful in appealing to the masses with his specific style and presentation but that safe and generic style prevents him from making a genuinely scary and unsettling horror film. Wan goes through all the stops here and every trick of the book is utilized with minimal results. When the ending finally mercifully arrives, you can’t help but feel that this second chapter adds nothing new or different and what you soon realize is that you just witnessed a movie that has ”money grab” written in great big letters  all over it. Bottom line: avoid a potential third Insidious at all costs.

C-

Trailer:

Movie info:

Runtime: 106 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, Lin Shaye

Director: James Wan

Screenplay: Leigh Whannell

Cinematography: John R. Leonetti