Review of Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) by Nascent — 23 Aug 2015

Insidious (1) had a unique premise mixed with some established horror scenarios. For the most part atmosphere was great and the characters were well created, written and acted. I didn't feel the film needed a sequel or sequels, but I watched Insidious Chapter 2 out of curiosity.

The opening scene was interesting and set up parts of the origin story and continued where the first film left off.. however it then immediately fell flat after the opening credits. The wife's character suddenly went from being a strong but terrified woman out of control and scared for her family with knowledge of something horrible from the first film's last scene, to a weak and pointless character that seems to have forgotten anything she learned from the first film and simply became a plot device babysitter while all the other adults were busy.

Patrick Wilson's character turned into a cliché bad guy that had none of the threat or complexity the first film had set up, and the children, as like the first film were mostly plot devices that really serve little purpose than to offer a couple of jump scares.

The main characters of this film are really the supernatural detectives and even they don't seem as well written or as interesting as they were in the first film. I actually found the entire first hour of the film (post credits) extremely mundane and boring, with the film only becoming interesting again after that hour mark, wherein it establishes more of the origin story and then proceeds to offer some interesting and memorable scenes that really don't justify the film's existence.

For some reason handycam footage is inter-cut into parts of the film, and atmosphere is really fairly weak in the movie, relying much more on jump scares this time round than in the previous 'chapter'.

I feel like this movie could've been more if it had had more time spent on the writing and didn't tread on the toes of the original film so much (there really is very little new in this film). The best parts of this film where when it directly intercut with the original film, as suddenly you understand a bit more of what's going on in the mysterious scenes of that movie, but personally I like mystery and would've been happy never seeing this sequel.

Personally I'd recommend against watching this film unless you really don't mind redundant sequels, and look out for the cup-and-string scene on youtube somewhere, as that really was the only original thing I saw in this film.