Insidious Chapter 2 Review

Rating: *

Insidious Chapter 2 Review: Like Wan’s previous film The Conjuring, Insidious 2 is flat, unimaginative, muddled, wearisome and without a single scare.

Director: James Wan

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Rose Bryne, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey, Steve Coulter, Lin Shaye

Masses appreciate critics for their discerning ability to evaluate films beyond their face value. They (i.e. critics) are expected to search for obvious/probable inspirations behind the film and its production values. The late Mr. Roger Ebert, while adding David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive in his Great Movies Collection, told us of person who would find everything to be a version of Homer’s Odyssey (except in case of Lynch’s puzzling masterpiece).

It may well extend beyond the world of cinema: a political uprising in a nation perhaps or the changing role of women at workplace or the masturbatory tendencies of Gen-Y to twerk, take selfies and talk like clones of Kardashian sisters (Sofia Coppola’s got us ‘Bling Ring’ while Harmony Korine found both critical and commercial success with ‘Spring Breakers’). They need to be sensitive to the obvious and underlying themes explored in the narrative, because all films don’t necessarily articulate each and every theme and in bold; if seen superficially, Fellini’s 8½ is only about Guido’s lack of commitment and his unhealthy obsession with women. They need to discover the unknown, or rather what’s only known to the cast and crew and perceived only by the intelligentsia, and in case they are mainstream critics, they need to break it down in easy-to-understand language for their readers.

But the bottom-line is, a reader wants to know whether the film’s worth his/her time or not. And any critic doesn’t want his Saturday night to be ruined watching a terrible film that’s somehow got inspired by classics (at least that’s what the director Tom Wiseau suggests).

The old fashioned sets in director James Wan’s Insidious Chapter 2, the sequel to Insidious, with their wide, filled-up drawing rooms, hallways and closets, reminded me of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary Baby and of course, James’ previous film The Conjuring. The director dollies his camera along a horizontal axis along different rooms to introduce a menacing element at a certain point. He zooms slowly into penetrating darkness so we anticipate something to pounce and scare the wits out of us. He introduces the haunted house in the beginning scene itself by angling it upwards from a lower height, so it gives a foreboding effect frequently seen in shows like Scooby Doo. While Joseph Bishara, the film’s composer, may believe he’s used the element of silence really well, he makes us listen to each and every object individually– a piano, creaking doors, a baby toy car, toy horses, a pram etc – and constructs an exhaustingly elaborate set-up along-with Wan for the film’s jump-scares. Some sets are stylized with smoke effects and blue and red lighting – a nod to 80s films like Nightmare on the Elm Street, which in my opinion is the only film that’s used the jump scares very effectively.

The plot itself takes a generous inspiration, especially from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining’. Patrick Wilson, playing the adult Josh here, is the prime suspect in the murder of Elise (Lin Shaye), a medium who found out about his astral projection abilities (travelling in planes populated by angels, spirits and other immaterial beings – esoteric spiritual stuff…) when he was a kid. Josh is in the photograph taken before her death, and the injuries on her body are definitely caused by strong human hands. The ever-suffering father of two (who may have had to celebrate his with prom with wife Renai and evil spirit X), no three (there’s a baby whose basic function is to bawl and mysteriously fall off his crib), says everything’s all right. Renai (Rose Bryne) is unsure; he doesn’t remember the song she composed for him, her son Dalton (also gifted with astral projection powers) tells her he’s been speaking to an unknown entity. Plus, he seems unusually calm for someone in a horror movie (by rule, NOONE can attain nirvana in a horror film), unlike Renai, the kids and John’s mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), who are and more importantly, look like perennially troubled soles; the kids get a little respite playing with a tin can telephone before it’s ‘Scare Time!’ for them – they remain in bed for much of the runtime. This is a family who may not know how to smile – even in their selfies would have a wide-eyed, horrified expression.

It is later found out that the actual John is trapped in an astral plane while the spirit of a creepy old murderer named Parker, who killed over fifteen people dressed in drag after years of physical and mental torment under his mother’s care (who wanted to turn him into a girl. Psycho, anyone?), is

taking possession of his physical body. It is up to Renai, Dalton (the other brothers are useless), Lorraine, Elise’s friend Carl (Steve Coulter), excruciatingly unfunny ‘comic reliefs’ Specs and Tucker, and Josh lost in astral plane to save Josh from the Woman in Black, the spirit of Parker, and his mother. This possessed spirit wants to kill his whole family; there’s a scene where he whams a bolted door with a fire-extinguisher just like Nicholson whacked his axe about thirty years before in The Shining. I waited for the moment he’d say ‘Here’s John…!’, but he doesn’t.

Insidious Chapter 2 works on two planes: the present and astral. Plus, it takes us to flashbacks and memories from Josh’s and Parker’s lives. For those who haven’t seen the prequel, the movie helps overly thoughtfully with expositions unraveling mysteries in the prequel. But the bottom-line here is: is the movie scary? Not one bit. And so it takes great effort to follow or even bother about the plot and characters as the film alternates between Josh and his family’s horror at home, Lorraine’s spooky hospital visit along with Carl, Specs and Tucker to find out about the spirit, and later the spirit Josh’s attempts to return from the astral world. I hate a scary movie which coats each bit of its frame with ‘horror’ till we are so accustomed to it we find it all very predictable. Neither the pan-caked faced mother ghost with an ugly wig and dark lip stick, nor her son ghost Parker, with all the lacerations on his face, make your hair stand on end when they pop up on screen. The repetitive mangled violin sound effect does little to help. Wan’s focus on elaborate set-ups for his jump-scares only expose his ineptitude in storytelling and character development.

The characters played by Patrick Wilson, Rose Bryne, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey (too beautiful and good-looking for grandma roles) and the rest seem like such uninteresting beings written only to have dozens of Wan’s horror effects experimented on them that there’s just nothing for us to root for them. Were Rosemary and her husband talking about spirits throughout Rosemary’s film? Remember Jack Nicholson’s lengthy monologues in The Shining? The most complex/personal things these characters say include horror clichés like ‘There’s nothing good in this place’, ‘Everything will be alright’, ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’, ‘I can’t do this to my family’. This film doesn’t even have the interesting plot device like Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street, where characters can only face the nemesis Freddie in their sleep. Like Wan’s previous film The Conjuring, Insidious 2 is flat, unimaginative, muddled, wearisome and without a single scare. It’s totally not worth your time, unless you’re eager on watching its possible sequel that’s promised at the end. But mind you, you’ll have to sit through a very boring film.

ourvadodara.in Rating Guide:

* = Avoid!!

** = Rent It / TV Premiere

*** = Book The Cheapest Seats

**** = Book The Best Seats

***** = Book The Best Seats + Buy The DVD!