I was never a fan of James Wan’s Insidious, a horror film I found more startling, and loud, than genuinely horrifying. It seemed to me that Insidious had cut the most human elements out of its own story – all the relatable parts about a family dealing with a mysteriously afflicted child – in an attempt to skip ahead to all the meaningless jump scares. Not to mention the sudden, jarring entrance of three “wacky” paranormal investigators who seemed like they were auditioning for their own television series… on The CW. Insidious‘s striking camera angles, deadly serious protagonists and macabre storyline implied that the film wanted to be taken seriously, so I had no choice but to consider it disappointing for failing to live up to what I had assumed was its own, self-declared goal.
But Insidious: Chapter 2 has forced me to reevaluate that old assessment. If the sequel is any indication, then Insidious: Chapter 1 was but a prologue to this campy, enjoyable fright flick whose serious undertones are merely window dressing for broad entertainment. All the “boo” scares, eerie cinematography and undercurrents of familial strife are still here, but they finally take a back seat to an amusingly elaborate mystery, wild attempts to make ghosts under bed sheets scary again (if indeed they ever were), and a now firmly established mythology that really does feel like the set-up for a TV series I would watch… even if it were on The CW.
When last we left the Lambert family (and make no mistake, you do need to have seen Insidious: Chapter 1 in order to have any idea what the hell is going on), patriarch Josh (Patrick Wilson) had just rescued his comatose son from “The Further,” the franchise’s oh-so-adorable pet name for The Spirit World, The Afterlife, or The Underlit Reused Set with Smoke Machines on at Full Blast. But Josh came back possessed by a creepy old lady who haunted him as a youth, and then he murdered the friendly psychic Elise (Lin Shaye) who had helped him reunite his family.
Now it’s up to Elise’s dorky sidekicks Specs and Tucker (screenwriter Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson) to save the Lambert family, and without the help of their greatest asset. So they enlist the aid of another, somewhat inferior psychic (Steve Coulter) and Josh’s own mother (Barbara Hershey) to finally solve the big mystery that’s been literally haunting the Lambert family since Josh was a little boy. Meanwhile, Josh’s wife Renai (Rose Byrne) begins to notice that, damn it, her family is still being haunted, and now her husband is prone to saying things that might as well come with subtitles reading “BE SUSPICIOUS OF ME.”
Insidious: Chapter 2 doesn’t screw around with any build-up this time, jumping from plot point to plot point to spooky set piece to zany exposition like a hyperactive housefly. But by now James Wan seems to have developed a canny eye for composition and seat-wetting shocks, and most importantly good pacing, setting these Insidious movies apart from his classier films (like The Conjuring) with their imaginative zeal and strange sense of humor. Insidious: Chapter 2 isn’t quite broad enough to qualify as a horror-comedy but it never shies away from its own quirkiness, and the film’s dedication to well-timed “gotcha” scares and adorable supporting characters gives the faint impression that this is a story is told by clever comedian who just happens to have a scary ghost story in his back pocket for just such an occasion.
Insidious: Chapter 2 is a pretty goofy title in and of itself, since A) these are hilariously long chapters, and B) I’ve never seen a book with only two chapters before. So either James Wan and Leigh Whannell are setting this series up for the long haul, and increasingly madcap adventures courtesy of Specs, Tucker and the unusual sidekick they pick up by the end of Insidious: Chapter 2 are on the way, or that’s only part of the joke. The Insidious films are shot like the real deal – terrifying horror stories that connect to audiences on a human level and deliver one nightmarish thrill after another – but they’re written and performed like good, old-fashioned, dopey larks. The storytelling value of this dramatic contrast eluded me in the previous film (which is why it is still the inferior of the two), but it’s abundantly clear in Insidious: Chapter 2 that seriousness is not on the agenda. This is just a simple, fun time at the movies.
Or an unusually good pilot for The CW.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
