Insidious: Chapter 2

insidiouschapter2

 

It picks up where the last movie left off with the family trying to get over what happened, but they are still connected to the spirit world.

I found the first movie to be a decent scary movie. It did rip off a lot of the plot from Poltergeist, but still made me jump and scream out loud at least once. I rewatched it the same day we were going to see the sequel in the theater. I had forgotten the very end where the dad, Josh (Patrick Wilson), did not seem to come back as himself when he astral projected into the spirit world to find his son

This one begins with the family still freaked out, especially Renai (Rose Byrne), who doesn’t fully believe that Josh is really Josh. I have seen Patrick Wilson in tons of movies before, but I have never found him creepy. He did a really good job giving off a full-on creepy vibe when he is possessed by someone else.

The movie did little callbacks to the first movie, which I found interesting, at first. Then, a little too much time was spent replaying parts of the first movie from a different angle or perspective. It felt like they ran out of story and needed to pad the movie. The movie also delved into what happened to Josh as  child, which I thought was done more successfully because we were briefly told what happened and this time got to see it.

This movie wasn’t as scary as the first one. The ghostbusting duo that showed up with the medium, Elise, in the first movie were back. They added a slight touch of humor to the first one, but are such goofballs in this one that it took away from the scares. There was a lot more humor in this movie, some of it intentional, which lightened up the mood too much for the audience to then be petrified about what was around the corner. Then there was the unintentional humor that came from some character pointing out something so obvious that the audience started laughing. Not really what you want in a horror film.

It is odd that it is the same director as Saw that wanted to prove that he could provide scares without gore so he made the first Insidious and the just released The Conjuring. Both of those were filled with a lot of long stretches of tension that when you do finally jump or scream at something, you get some release before it starts to build again. This movie doesn’t have any of that. It seems like he was bored making it.

By the end of the movie, the craziness with this family seems wrapped up, but with a sequel title of “Chapter 2,” it made me wonder if they were going for a third chapter after this one. Of course they were. The last few minutes of the movie show the ghostbusters arriving at a new family’s house with a special message from Elise. Does it make me excited about a new film? If the director seemed bored making this one, why should I want to continue watching the series?

Grade: C

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