Review of Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) by Brad H — 05 Jan 2014

I may not be the biggest fan of this series, but it does have a leg up on what the Paranormal Activity series has devolved into. Picking up right where the last one left off, this is about the same family that is still having problems with the spiritual realm, and they start to learn more about the history of what is haunting them.

Now I would say that I like the first Insidious, but more for what it is than the actual final product. It is a microbudget horror film, and I do believe that not bloating your budget needlessly is something that should be commended.

Granted, they've more than tripled their budget this time around, but by Hollywood standards, $5 million is still on the cheap side. Just this year, we got The Conjuring, which is from the same director (James Wan), coincidentally enough.

The Conjuring really raised the bar up pretty high on what can be done with this type of movie, doing more with less. It is also a good bit more contained than the film featured here, not that this movie is all that bad.

I have the same pair of problems that I have from the first time around, in that there are jump scares with those annoying score spikes, and a good number of times the score sounds like it was composed by a cat jumping on the piano.

Insidious: Chapter 2 did "get" me a number of times, and there's a lot less silly scares than I remember from the first one, but after just seeing The Conjuring, the standard has gone up.

If you enjoyed the first one, you'll like this one too.