I held high hopes for James Wan’s Insidious: Chapter 2. After all, his Insidious (2010) is in a select group of 21st century horror films that I’ve watched more than twice so I was hopeful, especially because the same director and writer were in place on this sequel. That’s generally a good sign.
In fact, I believe Insidious: Chapter 2 might be the better film, though, frankly, it’s hard to separate the two pictures. I honestly have never seen a sequel that’s as completely organic as this one.
I was especially struck by a scene that incorporated, expounded on and explained one of the random scares from Insidious. Naturally, I wanted to see how well this really fit, so I came home and popped the DVD in to check. It was only then that I realized that the first shot in Insidious by all rights belongs to Chapter 2 — or at least to the back story from 1986 that opens it.
By itself, it seems like little more than a creepy mood-setter. Taken in connection with Chapter 2, it becomes much more to the point. Whether this was intentionally done to lead to this sequel, I have no idea, but it helps to make the two movies virtually seamless.
The bulk of this film concerns whether what really came back from The Further in Insidious was indeed Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson). This isn’t much of a mystery, since we already knew he wasn’t himself by the end of the first film. However, we didn’t know exactly what he was, or whether he was possessed.
The second film unravels this and the story of Josh’s childhood possession. That story strikes me as stronger than the one about the red-faced demon in the first film. (And, despite the trailer’s use of the demon’s “theme” – the Tiny Tim recording of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” – he doesn’t show up here.)
All in all, Chapter 2 is a solid spook show, much like the first, but with the intensity ramped up. Since our spirit medium, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), is dead in this film (which doesn’t mean we won’t see her), her old associate, Carl (Steve Coulter), is brought in to work with the semi-comic relief ghost hunters Specs (writer Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson).
There are a couple of moments where the film starts to slip out of control, but these are quickly reined in. And the performance of Danielle Bisutti as the younger version of the “Bride in Black” is a most elegant personification of evil.
Horror is quite possibly even more subjective than comedy. What scares me, or at least creeps me out, is probably drawn from deep recesses in my psyche that I have only the vaguest understanding of. And there’s no guarantee that it will scare you.
It’s clear that James Wan has tapped into something , in both these films and Saw (2004) and Dead Silence (2007), that genuinely disturbs and unsettles me (not in a bad way, mind you).
Whether this will hit a nerve with you, I can’t say, but as modern horror goes, this one is up there with the best.
