Oh dear. Having turned in one of the best, scariest horror films in ages, James Wan is back for another bash at the haunted house genre – but this time, it’s kind of a disaster. Insidious: Chapter 2 suffers from the inevitable comparisons that’ll come from being released so soon after The Conjuring, but it’s hard to imagine a time when this film would’ve seemed okay. It’s dire. The thing is, because of how the last movie ended, we know who murdered Elise, and it’s not hard to figure out why. The first third of this film attempts to spin a mystery out of it, but there’s no ambiguity there at all; the audience knows what happened, and just has to wait for the characters to catch up. It’s kind of odd that they don’t catch on more quickly, since for them, no time has passed, and they’re all already in a state of nervous terror, jumping at every shadow. Watching them, we’re both ahead of them and behind: we know what’s going on, but we’re not scared, and that disconnection works against the film as it tries to draw us into the story. There’s an added layer of awkwardness, too, because the story moves backwards as well as forwards. Through a series of flashbacks and dusty videotapes, we see scenes from Josh’s childhood which try to explain exactly why he and his family are at the centre of all this paranormal activity. (That phrase wasn’t an accident, either: this device is very similar to the way the first two Paranormal Activity sequels try to work backwards to explain what’s going on.) The thing is, the explanation is really daft. Like, really, really, eye-rollingly daft. It’s so silly it retroactively makes the first Insidious film make less sense, by poking at (but not fixing) a plot hole no one had really noticed. Sure, there are a few jump scares, and the wonderfully screechy violin score is back, but you’ll get as much of a jolt out of the title appearing on screen as you will from seeing any of its ghouls. The biggest mistake Insidious: Chapter 2 makes is swapping the first film’s freakishly demonic baddie with a generic ghost – visually, it makes the hauntings much duller, while the new spectre’s bizarro revenge motivation is familiar from a million other movies. And while the first film might have worn its influences on its sleeve, at least it didn’t resort to actually showing you the scene it was about to recreate before it did it. If there’s one thing worth praising in this movie, it’s Patrick Wilson’s performance. He seems to have had fun, and he gets a couple of really brilliant moments as the film plods hopelessly towards its (anti)climax. But it’s hard to appreciate his work when everything that’s going on around him is so relentlessly terrible. It’s kind of heartbreaking, considering how far James Wan and Leigh Whannell seemed to have come from the dismal days of Dead Silence, but this totally unnecessary sequel should never have got further than a pitch meeting. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
