Review: Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey
Director: James Wan
Country: USA
Genre: Horror | Thriller
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Insidious: Chapter 2 is now open in wide release. For a Rewind Review of Insidious, check out Josh’s review here.

In mid-July, James Wan’s The Conjuring proved that throwback, old-school supernatural horror could still attract audiences in significant numbers while consistently engaging that audience with more than just shocks and scares (though both were present in overabundant supply). Roughly two months later, Wan is back with Insidious: Chapter 2, the follow-up to Wan and frequent collaborator Leigh Whannell’s low-budget, 2011 supernatural horror film, Insidious. For Wan, who’s since moved on to take over the Fast & Furious franchise from Justin Lin, Insidious: Chapter 2 marks the presumed end of his involvement with the horror genre. The genre and with it, the genre’s fans, will be the poorer for it. Unfortunately, Insidious: Chapter 2 fails to match the first entry in originality and ingenuity or The Conjuring’s combination of shocks and scares with strong storytelling and well-rounded characters.

When we last encountered the Lamberts, Josh (Patrick Wilson), the family patriarch, had successfully retrieved the soul of his oldest son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), from the “Further,” a way place or limbo for lost, rage-filled spirits who refuse to (or can’t) move on. Gifted with the ability to astral project himself into the “Further” while he dreamt, Dalton’s soul became lost while his body remained in a comatose state. Josh and his wife, Renai (Rose Byrne), initially turned to medical science to save their son, but when science proved inadequate, they turned to a psychic, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). She succeeded in helping Dalton return to his body, but lost her own life in the process. Josh returned changed, possibly possessed by an evil spirit. Despite doubts about Josh’s behavior, Renai remained with him, supporting his version of events during an interview with a police detective.

Renai’s discussion with the detective (Michael Beach) actually occurs in Insidious: Chapter 2‘s first present-day scene. Wan and Whannell, once again sharing story credit (Whannell received sole screenwriting credit), interpose a prologue set in 1986 between the present-day scenes. The prologue fills in key elements of Josh’s backstory. As a boy (Garrett Ryan), Josh suffered from the same affliction that sent Dalton into a near-permanent coma. While he slept, he entered the “Further” and like Dalton, drew a malevolent spirit (or more) to haunt him and his family. Called in by Carl (Steve Coulter), another paranormal investigator, Elise (Lindsay Seim, oddly voiced by Lin Shaye) uncovers the true nature of the haunting and hypnotizes Josh to help him forget his paranormal experiences.

As with The Conjuring, Wan deserves credit for eliciting grounded, realistic performances from his young actors, but it’s not the acting audiences will remember from Insidious: Chapter 2.

On the surface, the prologue seems like time-wasting padding, but to Wan and Whannell’s credit, it provides Insidious: Chapter 2 with one of its cleverest twists, albeit one that might add an unnecessarily convoluted element to the Insidious mythos. The prologue also serves to introduce audiences to the Lamberts’ new home – or rather Josh’s old home – his mother Lorraine’s (Barbara Hershey). The long tracking scenes inside Lorraine’s house, punctuated, of course, with the occasional shock or scare, offer proof of Wan’s development from horror novice (e.g., Saw, Dead Silence) to horror auteur. Wan doesn’t just throw or slip in scares randomly, but builds toward those scares deliberately (especially during the first half), gradual escalating tensions before finally (mercifully) paying off that slow build with a major emotional payoff.

For all of Wan’s masterful use of space and sound (atonal strings, occasional silences), Wan either repeats himself or plays a minor variation on set pieces we’ve seen before. That lack of set-piece originality isn’t necessarily a problem, but the lack of narrative originality is. Borrowing heavily, sometimes shamelessly, from both Psycho and The Shining, Insidious: Chapter 2 quickly veers from possible (if not probable) homage to two of the horror genre’s acknowledged masterpieces to head-scratching, laugh-inducing camp – a definite negative given that Wan and Whannell want audiences to take Insidious: Chapter 2 seriously most of the time. The other times Whannell’s ghost-hunting character, Specs, and Angus Sampson’s character, Tucker, provide sporadic, ill-judged attempts at physical comedy.

Josh’s increasingly erratic behavior gives Patrick Wilson the chance to show range, but he overplays the tics and gestures, essentially giving away his character’s (non) secret moments after entering the film. That’s as much Wan’s and Whannell’s fault as it is Wilson’s. There’s borderline camp in Steve Coulter’s medium and his preferred tool for communicating with the dead, but thankfully he’s only a supporting character. Byrne has turned playing a long-suffering, tortured wife into a science. Hershey’s Lorraine slips into paranormal detective mode to discover the nature of the evil spirit(s) haunting the Lamberts. It’s a welcome turn from a once criminally underused actress. As with The Conjuring, Wan deserves credit for eliciting grounded, realistic performances from his young actors, but it’s not the acting audiences will remember from Insidious: Chapter 2. They’ll remember the steady stream of disturbing, disquieting images and Josh’s third-act return to the “Further’s” seemingly limitless darkness.

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Mel Valentin

Staff Film Critic

Mel Valentin hails from the great state of New Jersey. After attending New York University as an undergrad (politics and economics double major, religious studies minor) and grad school (law), he relocated from the East Coast to San Francisco, California, where he's been ever since. Since Mel began writing about film nine years ago, he's written more than 1,600 reviews and articles. He's a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society.

Latest posts by Mel Valentin (see all)

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