Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) - Review

James Wan is a master filmmaker.  Seriously, he’s up there for me with Joss Whedon, Sam Raimi, and James Gunn.  And when I put anybody up with Joss, you know he’s worth his salt.  I would say he’s my favorite horror director, but I think I love the Evil Dead series just a bit too much to go that far.  Even so, he’s easily my second favorite (as Wes Craven has way too much crap in his filmography to take that spot).  Saw is a tense psychological thriller, The Conjuring is a masterfully creepy slow burn, and Insidious... well, Insidious is just a balls to the wall, delightfully scary good time.  I kid you not when I say I watched Insidious with headphones at one in the morning and it was probably the most frightened I’ve ever been during a movie.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is definitely not as good of a film as its predecessor, but it’s still a worthy, if unnecessary installment in James Wan’s career.  I fully anticipated to love this movie to death, but I feel as if my expectations were set a bit too high due to the much superior The Conjuring’s release only a few months earlier.  The two have similarities other than Wan himself: both have creepy haunted houses, both make you choke on their thick atmospheres, and both star the immensely lovable Patrick Wilson.

This is legitimately one of the scariest images I've ever seen

The acting is pretty standard here for the most part.  Rose Byrne is good as always.  Lin Shaye is too cheesy, as always.  The two ghostbuster guys provide comic relief (and luckily, writer/actor Leigh Whannell is quite funny).  But the real standout is Patrick Wilson, who delivers such a zany and deranged performance that you might mistake him for Jack Torrance.  He really makes the last act of the film a joy to watch (which is, let’s be honest, the most consistently weak part of James Wan films).

Not everything works to the film’s credit, though.  The time travel aspect, while interesting, doesn’t really make any sense.  The complete demystification of The Bride in Black (which is far and away the scariest part of the first film) is incredibly infuriating.  But the most unbalanced aspect of the film is the pacing, which never quite knows if it wants to kick into overdrive or dial back to create tension, so it tries to do both at the same time, to mixed success.

I recommend you watch Insidious: Chapter 2 without drawing comparisons to The Conjuring.  The Conjuring is unequivocally the better movie, so take it out of the equation completely, and I think you’ll find this installment in the Insidious franchise(?) to be entertaining, albeit not completely essential.