Cinema Reviews

Insidious Chapter 2 Review

• 10th Sep 2013

Insidious Chapter 2 is the follow up to the 2011 Insidious, from the makers of Saw. It picks up where the previous edition left us. After having successfully retrieved their son from the dream-like ether, where he was firmly in the grasp of a terrifying beastie, the Lambert family, move into the huge – and satisfyingly creepy – home of their grandmother (Barbara Hershey). While his son may be back on the mortal plane, it seems Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) seems to be sporting a rather large amount of ghostly possession. Has he brought back more than his son from the misty other world? Well, yes, he has.

In a disappointing and sadly indicative opening, Chapter 2 kicks off with a frightening, sorry, make that frighteningly bad scene that harks back beyond the first film and into prequel territory. What a strange and ill-judged decision to dub the Elise character played by Lin Shaye we met in Insidious. Using a young actress to play the physical role and lip-synching to the script; it’s pretty much just annoying. True, Shaye has a very distinctive voice, but Wan and Whannell should really credit their audience with enough intelligence to put two and two together. The relevant circumstances are more than sufficiently explained by a short scene in a police cell, where Rose Byrne’s Mrs Lambert describes the events of the first film. It is a depressing start to the film and does not bode well.

Chapter 2 is more than slightly infuriating in its desire to explain each and every scare from the original, and is thus in turn not at all scary. Bring back the Wan/Whannell of old. Credit the audience with a modicum of intelligence. It’s a horror film, a ghostly horror film. It’s more than ok for things to be unexplained; in fact, it’s desirable. Explaining the scares is like explaining the joke. It ruins everything. Whatever magic the two worked with The Conjuring has obviously lost its sparkle. Where Insidious was a creepy and largely successful, if familiar, haunted house pic (fine, it may be a little weird towards the end, where the quest for new ground causes it to unravel slightly, but on the whole, it is a fun, scary ride). Chapter 2, however, is derivative rather than familiar and manages to steal from its own progenitor. One of its only saving graces is Patrick Wilson’s creepy turn as, essentially, a cross-dressing serial killer. His dead eyed gauntness just about the only disturbing thing about the whole film.

Some of the pure silliness that drags the film down is its preoccupation with gender roles. The terrifying old lady from Josh’s youth is efficiently debunked by Chapter 2. The apparition evidently would have benefited from some counselling. Mummy issues are clearly quite a destructive as Daddy ones – they just aren’t very scary.

Quite what Oren Peli added to the mix, it is unclear. For someone with such a record for doing a lot with a little, the audience will surely be at a loss to explain quite what happened here. The sets are clumsy and fake looking. Stick on beards and terrible plastic spider webbing, so very seventies, are back here with a vengeance. Dead bodies display none of the correct decomposition we have all come to expect from countless hours of exposure to CSI and its fellows. No maggots? Wrong!

Disappointing from the team, especially having turned out such a successful, scary price with The Conjuring.

Hannah Turner