Insidious Chapter 2

The sequel to James Wan's Insidious picks up moments after the first film's wild ending. While this may fool some in to thinking the original was always planned as a trilogy, the film struggles to regain the clever scares of the first film. In fact, Wan recycles so many of his scares from The Conjuring and Insidious here that he could be sued for plagiarizing his own stuff.

Chapter 2 continues to follow the Lambert family. Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) has returned from The Further and has brought something back with him, or is it the evil spirit of the first film. The first third of the film desparately tries to spin a mystery out of the death of psychic Elise from the first film. The problem is we already know who killed her and the why is pretty straightforward. The other focus is on Josh. Wilson's performance is terrible here. Every moment he is on screen he is screaming "I'm the bad guy" with his performance. All of this makes it hard to reengage with these characters and this story.

Wan crafted a loving tribute to Poltergeist with the first film. Insidious kept taken turns that kept it interesting and engaging. Chapter 2 feels tacked on to the first film. The screenwriter even has to bring in time traveling of sorts to tie the first film into this unnecessary sequel. Wan seems to be exhausted with his patented jump scares. Only one scene in the film delivers the goods. Wan seems capable of so much more here but the inspiration is clearly not there.

As the film progresses, all characters from the first film are brought back. The tone of the film is particularly uneven with the paranormal hunters from the first film. Case in point during a scene where their lives are on the line, jokes are attempted and then someone dies. This uneven shifting of tones plagues other scenes in the film as well rendering the whole thing silly where the first film felt genuinely scary. 

Overall the film is a terribly unneeded sequel that exchanges the creepy demon of the first film for a ghostly women we just saw in Wan's The Conjuring. The script struggles to create any suspense or surprises and instead opts to explain the events of the first film until it renders them uninteresting. Here's hoping Wan shifts gears soon and not just to his other franchise, The Fast and the Furious.