'


Insidious: Chapter 2
1.5 Waffles!

Patrick Wilson is back as Josh – the father struggling to bring some normalcy to his family after the horrible events of the first movie. He has been accused of murder, and wants to convince the family that all of the strange noises and other bumps in the night don’t exist. However, his wife, Renai (Rose Byrne), is starting to wonder what the heck is going on in this crazy house (they should be leaving!).

Something is bothering the baby!

Something keeps playing the piano!

Something is sitting there in the living room!

What is it?

James Wan is a very talented director who knows how to get the most out of a crummy script, but, since he helped contribute the story, he doesn’t escape unscathed from this review or the derision of anyone who sees Insidious: Chapter 2. It was so bad, the crowd was openly laughing at the worst moments and mocking several characters.

Much like the first Insidious, Wan and the gang are working with a small budget, which can be a benefit and a curse. Some of the special effects seem cheesy and cheap, like Josh’s trips into the other world (or other dimension or The Further or whatever you want to call it) where he wanders into a pitch black dark stage with some smoke and steam and that is supposed to creep us out and feel otherworldly. At best, it looks like a failed haunted house attraction put on by the Rotary Club at Halloween.

At other times, the low tech effects add a brutal realism to it all, and shock us even more than the most supercharged CGI.

However, Insidious: Chapter 2 becomes too campy and too silly for its own good. Wan and co-writer Leigh Whannell are overly focused on the big scare moments and not focused enough on storytelling. It’s a very flat, out of left field story without much importance to the impact on the audience. It’s all just an excuse to go into another creepy house, and introduce some new characters that could serve as the primary leads for a sequel (which is heavily implied in this movie).

The rest of the time Wan and Whannell are trying too hard to tie into the last movie. We have moments that would be very cool to see how they tied into the last movie if Insidious was some highly revered, game-changing, classic film, we have watched 20 times over, but it’s not. Unless you want to watch both movies back to back, these in jokes and occurrences mean nothing because they aren’t exactly explaining any moments or scenes that were monumental and make us wonder what was behind it all. They are answering questions no one is asking.

Insidious: Chapter 2 feels like a movie rushed out there to capitalize on the success of the first without any reason other than to cash in as quickly as possible.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of terror and violence, and thematic elements.