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View Full Version : Insidious: Chapter 2 (James Wan)



Henry Gale
09-14-2013, 11:29 PM
IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2226417/)

http://www.chicagonow.com/sarah-takes-on-movies/files/2013/09/Insidious_Chapter_2_1.jpg

Henry Gale
09-14-2013, 11:47 PM
Goofy, creepy fun, just like the first.

A bit overly retreaded in spots from its scare formula even to xeroxing certain plot points, but it nicely expands its wacko mythology and picks up the characters and keeps their arcs going from the previous movie in a really effervescent and natural way. Most importantly, it manages to capture and blend the same sort of sharply frightening and awkwardly comedic tone (intentional or not), as hit and miss as ever, but oh man, when it hits...

I also probably took way more joy out of them re-writing or re-framing certain key events from the first movie with its time-and-spirits-are-relative journeys into The Further than I really should have. But if you're going to make a sequel and add more layers to a movie with bananas-logic (even for supernatural horror), then why not try and pull a Back to the Future Part II with it?

It's not a strong movie by any means, and I know I'm in a small minority of people on here that even enjoyed the first one enough to care about this at all, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make for a really fun time at the theatre, especially with a maybe-slightly-overexcited opening night crowd. Plus it takes itself lot less seriously and is far less predictable (perhaps at the expense of logic) than Wan's Conjuring, even if it's less formally refined. So I guess I'm saying it's better even though I was just more disappointed by that July film of his and more simply pleasantly, easily amused by the unapologetic ridiculousness and well-crafted scares of this.

Bosco B Thug
09-15-2013, 01:22 AM
I'm not going to rate this just yet, I'm just going to leave my movie poster quote for it: "Could this be the new vanguard in the creation of the highly profitable horror film? Profoundly bad filmmaking!"

Sorry HG. I kind of enjoyed it too. Particularly Lynne Shaye in the highly transparent role of the new Zelda Rubinstein.

Rowland
10-03-2013, 03:37 PM
The first of the recent string of better-than-expected James Wan spook-a-blasts to really make me see where the detractors have been coming from, but it's still a pretty tasty slice of hokum, all the more so for how needlessly convoluted and insane its retconned mythology becomes, even if that comes at the expense of the relative purity of the original.

Dead & Messed Up
12-14-2013, 11:43 PM
On the one hand, the recursive narrative here makes for some nice surprises, but on the other hand, it also feels similar to how the Saw series kept doubling back on itself until it ended up somewhere in Jigsaw's lower colon. The big thing here I have a problem with - and this feels like a common problem to Wan's ghost stories - is that the humans so often feel like plot motivators instead of people. They learn the required information, scream at the appropriate moments, and otherwise feel like placards. The ghostbusters' goofiness is so unexpectedly welcome simply because it's a character trait.

Similarly, the gender-bending son and Joan Crawford mother almost shatters the fourth wall with its sudden burst of campiness, but at least it feels like the movie's trying to do something interesting.

Irish
12-15-2013, 01:45 PM
Huge disappointment.

This movie is curiously unfocused for its entire run time. It's made tedious by a first hour where nothing happens and every scare is telegraphed.

Plays like a studio exec ordered off a menu of horror movie cliches. Supernatural, psychological, slasher, gender dismorphia, hell let's throw in a touch of body horror and found footage too. On top of that, it can never quite settle on a "villain" or primary threat to the family. Instead it jumps around between 2 or 3 and none of them are scary or threatening in the slightest.

I got restless when half the cast explored an abandoned hospital (at night, no less) and the plot starts seriously leaning toward cheapy elements from The Shining.

Creatively bankrupt. Feels like a paycheck movie for everyone involved.

How the hell did Wan turn out this and The Conjuring in the same year?

Skitch
12-15-2013, 08:57 PM
This is the definition of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it doesn't hold a candle to the terror that is the first film. On the other hand, this is one of the weirdest comedy/time-travel/slasher/ghost movies I've ever seen, and it completely changes the way you look at the original. Its like Back To The Future 2 meets Vincent Price's House On Haunted Hill. A clever idea of a film that belongs on the shelf with Blair Witch 2: Book Of Shadows as an entertaining curiosity, but a let down after the absolute horror of the original.

Dead & Messed Up
12-16-2013, 02:38 AM
Also, punctuating every scare with a piano-sledgehammered shock sound bugged the hell out of me. I suppose I should be grateful that wasn't accompanying a cat jumping around.

Henry Gale
12-16-2013, 04:21 AM
Going by these last few reactions, I'm starting to think that a semi-full theatrical audience of people even more eager than you to be scared by whatever horror "gags" it may or may not have in store (and potentially telegraph minutes beforehand) is/was the only way to fully enjoy this franchise's brand of lunacy. My theatre's audible excitement and reactions rivaled only certain showings of great comedies I saw this year, even if there wasn't half as many noticeable laughs (other than for me, mostly stemming from sheer joy rather than any sort of disapproval).

My whole outlook on this type of horror is if it somehow finds itself being afraid of being goofy, then it fails to aspire to conceive or register anything in a certain realm of heightened theatrics and ridiculous gestures, whether it might make you laugh or shriek (and neither should be more or less valid than the other), and if it's somehow more self-conscious about what it should be doing in terms of toning itself down, then what fun with it can you have?

Sure it's more formally sloppy and less tightly-wound narratively than The Conjuring, but at least there's some vibrancy and personality to its style. There's an actual sense of blood pumping in its pacing and atmosphere, even if it has more energy than it knows what to do with. The worst thing that ever happened to Conjuring was the real events (without any discernible harm done to anyone) that inspired it, leaving the whole thing to be locked in a vague dullsville of true accounts inconsequential subjectivity. On the other hand, Insidious Chapter 2 can do whatever the fuck it wants, it knows it, and it's more entertaining for it. My only criticism would be that it didn't find ways of going even further...

megladon8
12-28-2013, 02:34 AM
I loved the first one. I thought it was one of the most inventive and effective haunted house films since The
Changeling.

The sequel (or rather, part 2 of the story) is a step down from the first, but I still felt it was effectively creepy and well played by all involved.

My main gripe lies in the "villain" not being nearly as interesting visually or frightening in concept as the original's more demonic force. I found that the more we got to know about the being in question, the less I found them frightening.

I was also a bit disheartened to find the film relying on jump scares and piano thuds much more than Wan's two preceding films (The Conjuring, and the original Insidious).

Patrick Wilson does a great job playing himself both possessed and normal, and continues to be one of my favorite "every man" leading men.

And while it's arguable that the original went off the rails a little bit in its Argento-aping finale in the demon's lair (I happened to love it, but I know many didn't), I wish this one had had something similarly off-the-wall.

I did really like its time travel stuff!

Skitch
12-28-2013, 04:17 AM
Patrick Wilson does a great job playing himself both possessed and normal, and continues to be one of my favorite "every man" leading men.

While I didn't like part 2 nearly as much as part 1, I agree with this 110%.


I did really like its time travel stuff!

I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm borderline obsessed with anything time travel related.

Dead & Messed Up
12-28-2013, 05:37 AM
I thought Wilson was cardboard in The Conjuring, but he works in the Insidious movies.

Dukefrukem
01-03-2014, 01:00 AM
Loved this but talk about being in denial 30 seconds after the first film ends; "Well maybe she crawled out of her crib has she ever done that before?"