Insidious: Chapter 2

Picking up where the first film left off, Insidious: Chapter 2 follows Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) as they continue to battle the demons that have plagued Josh since childhood. Filmmaker James Wan, along with screenwriter Leigh Whannell, does a superb job of diving right back into the world of 2010’s Insidious, and it’s worth noting that the movie, stripped of its need to develop the characters and the premise, often fares even better than its entertaining predecessor – as the film does, for the most part, move at a blistering pace that generally compensates for its deficiencies. (There are, in terms of the latter, far too many instances of characters creeping around spooky locales, with the less-than-effective nature of such moments compounded by Wan’s ongoing reliance on tiresome “boo!” scares.) And although Wan’s curiously low-rent visual sensibilities – the movie often looks as though it’s been filmed with bargain-basement digital cameras – remains a distraction from start to finish, Insidious: Chapter 2 benefits substantially from a propulsive narrative that grows more and more engrossing as time progresses (ie Whannell’s penchant for throwing in everything but the proverbial sink ensures that the movie is, at the very least, never boring). By the time the extremely (and appreciatively) over-the-top final stretch rolls around, Insidious: Chapter 2 has definitively established itself as a better-than-average sequel that seems to cement Wan’s place as a top-notch horror director – although it’s ultimately impossible not to wish that he’d return to his gore-friendly roots (ie this is the man, after all, responsible for the first Saw movie).

*** out of ****