Insidious - Chapter 2

Halloween is on its way and the first horror movie to be released is James Wan's and Leigh Whannel's sequel to the successful horror film Insidious.

The sequel continues right where the last one left off with the father being possessed by a spirit. What is quite an achievement for this sequel is the budget does not seem to have gone over-board. It is still the same quality as the first film. With horror sequels the budget can go either way, bigger (Exorcist II: The Heretic / Poltergeist II: The Other Side or lower (Mirrors 2 / The hills have Eyes 2). I found though that story wise the film lacked the scares of the original. Which leads me to comparing it to the other spiritual franchise (Poltergeist).

In it's followup the cast of the original film returned, all except one actress who sadly died in a tragic murder with her boyfriend. That is true by the way and yes, scared the hell out of me when I found out.   Only difference is while Poltergeist: The Other Side when extremely over budget James kept the film at  the same tone as the original. There is no cgi used in this. No crazy monsters pop up. It is a good film. But the one similarity (besides the returns of the original cast) is story wise it falls short. Poltergeist 2 delved deeper into its ridiculous mythology about some cultist who has it out for their daughter. It's similar with Chapter 2 of the Insidious franchise. If memory does serve me, the reason behind the monster's creation was because the actor who portrayed the cultist spirit died while filming. So they came up with the whole monster idea to keep the story going.

Back to Insidious, chapter 2 delves into what is haunting Josh, the father of the family who is now possessed. They have temporally moved into his mother's home for the time being but soon a ghost pops up and starts causing trouble. The back story does get quite disturbing. There are some nice twists here and there but the ultimate tension and terror that was in the original film is gone her, mostly. There are two instances in the film where you can't help but laugh out of the ridiculousness of it all. Now as I said no monsters appear in the film but the story does get a bit convoluted. It's not a simple haunting, there's a reason behind it. And the film explains the reasons so much that characters don't get any development, the son who was possessed in the previous film is barely given a chance to explain is issues. I mean what I would have loved is if we saw what went on at the babysitter's or school. Add more character. While the story is interesting and one characters makes a welcome return the film does fall into cliche. The father becomes a raging lunatic (Jack Torrence of The Shining). And even the back story to the spirit in possession of the father's body is beyond disturbing, why would a mother want to make her boy act like a girl. How messed up can you get. I wanted to be scared. And at parts I was. But while the backstory held my interest the present issues were cliched, the moment when the baby sitter decides to drop the kids off back at home but not the baby???? Why keep the baby and not the kids, shouldn't all the kids stay at the baby-sitter's. Thats what I mean by we should have seen what happened at the sitter's. Could of added for more interesting drama.

The follow up is a descent enough follow-up.  In the end both the father and son go to have their memory of the events erased. Which makes no sense to me cause is that not how this whole thing started in the first place. I mean the spirit that was in possession of the father's body did loose it's grasp on reality but other spirits could still, or maybe not. I'm getting ahead of myself, them forgetting means they no longer fly out of their bodies when they dream which then means that the spirits can't possesses their bodies.

As all series go a third is in the works, and like with poltergeist I believe only a small fraction of the original cast will return.

  I wanted to talk about another issue I feel may have meaning to the difference in quality, story wise, to the first film. Me, the first film didn't really scare me, but it had a great sense of atmosphere and it was a simple story with a stellar twist. I feel with James Wan (the director) moving on to bigger projects (The Conjuring, Fast 7) Leigh might of felt he was being left behind, maybe a little jealous. So maybe he wanted to tell his own story here, or ruin it so much that James would not come back. Already, plans are under way for the sequel and only Leigh has signed on again as writer. Yes, James is now going to be busy with Fast 7 and I am going to go see it. But I do wonder if Leigh isn't jealous of James' star going up and his still down there with Jigsaw and the puppets. Just a thought.

On a final note I would say to check this film out, its not bad. The story isn't as simple or scary as the first one but the back story is interesting enough and the actors don't hold back, the performances are really good and strong. And, I actually am excited about a third chapter. I think it should tie the franchise up with the spirit of the first film coming back for Dalton.

I give chapter 2 a 3 1/2 out of 5.