“Into the Further we go…”
The H-Bomb: Picking up directly where the original Insidious left off, Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) has successfully rescued his son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins) from that ghostly nether-realm, the Further. However, it seems that they’re not quite out of danger, yet, as just minutes after Dalton awakens from his coma, Elise Rainer (Lin Shaye), the medium who helped the Lambert family save their son, is brutally strangled to death. The police immediately suspect Josh, but the forensics indicate that it was somebody else, so they let him go.
Josh and Renai (Rose Byrne) pack up the family to go stay with Josh’s mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), as they attempt to put their lives back together. But despite the assurances from Josh that all is well, both Renai and Lorraine can sense that something is very wrong, as they both hear strange noises and encounter ghostly apparitions in the house. Most troubling of all, is what’s happening to Josh. He seems to be aging rapidly, with his hair going gray and his teeth falling out, and he often appears to be talking to himself.
After a few close encounters of the undead kind, Lorraine and Renai, with the help of a new psychic, Carl (Steve Coulter), go digging back into Josh’s past in the hopes of finding out whatever it is that’s haunting them in the present. Soon, the Lamberts come to the terrifying realization that while they may be finished with the Further, the Further is not finished with them.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I went into Insidious: Chapter 2, the follow-up to director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell’s surprise 2011 hit, with unreasonably high expectations. Not only did I think the first Insidious was a fantastically eerie little flick, but I also thought that Wan’s earlier ghost tale from this summer, The Conjuring, was one of the scariest fucking movies I have seen in years. I was really hoping he’d scare the bijesus out of me yet again, but this time, he just didn’t quite pull it off.
I won’t say that I was disappointed with this sequel, because overall I did enjoy the movie, it simply failed to recreate that same creepy magic from the past movies that made my skin crawl and my goosebumps pop. One major problem is that the first twenty minutes are rather slow and clunky as hell. Whereas the first Insidious and The Conjuring both got their creep on right out the gate, this one took quite a while to get going. The reason for this is that this time the plot is much more convoluted, which works both to the movie’s advantage and disadvantage.
This considerably more elaborate scenario harms the film because so much time is spent establishing these new story threads and connecting them all together, that it doesn’t have nearly as much room to create the right kind of atmosphere and really get under our skin. Now, once it gets past this clumsy, unfocused first act, the movie finds its footing and finally turns into one creepy, solid spookfest… it just took a bit too long to get there.
Another big issue I have wth the story, and this may seem obvious to a lot of you, but still, it needs to be addressed, in order to follow Insidious: Chapter 2, you really need to have seen the original. Not only do you have to have seen it, you need to remember it fairly well, so if you only saw the first one once, I strongly advise you to give it another watch it before going into the sequel.
All that out of the way, the multifaceted story that Wan and Whannell have crafted is actually quite interesting. I obviously can’t get into specifics here, but it does what a proper sequel should do in that it expands on the story in ways that reveal more of what’s going on, not only in this movie, but the previous one, as well. This time we find out much more about Josh’s connection to the Further, as well as who exactly that sinister old woman ghost who wants to take over his body is, and we learn more about the Further itself and how that works. The movie also cleverly weaves its narrative into that of the first film in a way in which fans (such as myself) will get a kick out of. All in all, it’s a proper, well thought out, and genuinely surprising continuation of Insidious, instead of just a lazy rehash. It’s nice to see that Wan and Whannell actually gave a shit and put real effort into it.
It’s also nice to see that the returning cast also puts real effort into reprising their roles, with Wilson and Byrne committing one hundred percent emotionally and giving it their all. Special kudos go to Wilson for having to play it much darker this time, often channeling Nicholson from The Shining, and pulling it off exceptionally well. Hershey is given a much larger role here, as we find out more about her character, too, and she handles it like the pro that she is. Whannell and Angus Sampson return as the bickering ghost buster idiots, bringing much needed comic relief, and Shaye puts in a brief but welcome appearance as the cool headed ghost whisperer.
Overall, I can say that even though Insidious: Chapter 2 doesn’t quite reach the same frightening heights of its predecessor, it is in its own right a worthy follow-up. It takes the story in new directions that are intriguing and satisfying, and again, while it’s not consistently scary, it’s not without its share of creepy moments and surprise jolts. Best of all, it finishes up with a possible lead in to Chapter 3, and judging from the amount of cash it’s raked in on its opening weekend alone, it seems as though a third chapter is inevitable.
