While many horror sequels find their way straight into DVD bargain bins, the wild success of the first instalment has apparently birthed a genuine cinematic franchise. However, while the success of the first Insidious is undeniable (in terms of money, it made obscene amounts compared to its meagre budget), there is a case to be made that people are misremembering it to some extent. Yes, it was scary at times, but it was also very, very silly.
2010’s Insidious started as a supremely effective haunted-house movie, with some genuine scares and good performances from Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson to back them up. However, the latter half of the film descended into far sillier territory, with trips into the spirit realm and unintentionally hilarious lycra-clad demons running around. It was great fun, but it wasn’t as memorable as that chilling first half.
Insidious Chapter 2 is very much a continuation of that silly second half, and while an assessment of the franchise could have gone either way, we must now abandon hope of it being a genuine horror series. Anyone expecting so will be disappointed; Insidious: Chapter 2 is pure hokum.
What Insidious Chapter 2 does have to offer is a whole lot of fun. The film picks up directly after the first, with Patrick Wilson’s Josh Lambert stuck in the spirit realm, and Rose Byrne’s Renai Lambert finding that the Josh that did return is possessed by something nasty. Can Renai, with the help of returning ghost hunters Elaine, Tucker and Specs (Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson and Leigh Whannell – also returning as writer from the first film) rescue the real Josh and put a stop to the madness once and for all?
Chapter 2 is a true sequel – in that you really need to have seen the first instalment to get the most out of it – and it’s one that delves into the Lambert family history to uncover exactly why their family is so dogged by the spirit-world. In some of the more effective moments, it also revisits certain sequences from the first film, only from different perspectives – namely from the view-point of the spirit-world.
There’s no doubt that this aspect to the film is great fun, but it also highlights a major problem – the only real scares in this film are those that are repeated from the first. Chapter 2 doesn’t have that genuinely unsettling first half, and so the scariest thing about it is not that something keeps activating a children’s toy in the middle of the night (yawn), but more that someone would ever make a children’s toy that makes such an awful noise in the first place.
Insidious Chapter 2 has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, and returning director James Wan keeps things entertaining throughout, no more in evidence than in the beefed up roles for the nerdy, bickering ghost-hunters. But it’s a film that will never have you sweating on the edge of your seat, nor even particularly jumping out of it.
What it is – if you’re willing to go along with the silliness – is a film that may well leave you grinning. And if it’s never going to be compared to The Exorcist or The Shining, there are worse things to bring to mind than Poltergeist and Beetlejuice.
Released in UK cinemas on Friday 13 September 2013.