Insidious : Chapter 2

INSIDIOUS : CHAPTER 2

Director : James Wan
Year : 2013
Genre : Horror
Rating : Zzzzzzzzzzz

 

A very strange thing happened to me when I saw 'Insidious : Chapter 2' yesterday in Birmingham. I went into the auditorium with low expectations as I wasn't the hugest fan of the original and my thoughts on director James Wan are at best, shall we say, ambivalent. But I sat in my seat hoping for the best, the lights dimmed and the screening started; the adverts played, the innumerable amount of trailers rolled on and after half an hour, 'Insidious : Chapter 2' finally began. What happened next was something that hasn't happened to me in the three years that I have been an amateur film critic; I FELL ASLEEP! I wasn't particularly tired on going in, but after nearly an hour of unbearably dull cinema, my body drifted into a slumber from which I awoke to find myself alone in the theatre. Yes, the other cinemagoers had walked out of the room; presumably to ask for a prompt refund. To say that 'Insidious : Chapter 2' is boring is really understating how knuckle-chewingly tedious this waste of celluloid is. It is a badly written, shoddily directed and terribly scripted vortex of insurmountable banality that only serves to fill the horror gap left vacant until Halloween and nothing else.

'Insidious : Chapter 2' continues the story of The Lamberts, a family who are still haunted by the spirit of a mass murderer who was seemingly destroyed in the previous film. Seeking to uncover the truth behind the paranormal activity that has taken a hold of their lives, the Lamberts must go beyond the limits of our reality and vanquish the psychotic ghost once and for all.

James Wan is of course the brains behind the hugely influential 'Saw' franchise; a series that began well but eventually reduced to displaying over the top gore with no sense of purpose whatsoever. Bolstered by the success of 'Saw', Wan would go on to make such varied fare as 'Dead Silence', 'Death Sentence' and of course, the brilliantly creepy 'The Conjuring'. Recently however, he has firmly stuck to a certain subgenre that has destroyed his reputation with die - hard horror fans; that of the haunted house movie, a very difficult category to pull off well. Instead of creating terror with overwhelming atmosphere or a growing sense of dread, Wan resorts to the laziest and most tired conventions that exists in horror; a door opening on it's own accord, a child saying that they can see the dead and sadly, the dreaded jump scare. Executed well, this type of shock can bring an audience to tears and has proved to work efficiently in some of the most revered shockers of all time including 'Halloween', 'The Exorcist' and of course, 'Jaws'. However, the jump scares worked so well in these films because they had each been building up the tension and the atmosphere through great direction and likable characters, using the scare once or twice. Not over and over and over and over again to the point where the audience is just counting down the seconds to the next loud bang or excessively blaring musical sting. This device may have worked in the 1970's but it is now 2013 and we as moviegoers expect more from horror and sadly, we are not getting it. Wannabe directors are content just to shout ''boo!'' at us for an hour and a half without giving us any relatable characters or a story we can care about, Gone are the days of horror, welcome to the world of sneeze cinema; a series of short, sharp reflexes that does nothing to improve our lives and only anger us.

The narrative itself isn't particularly interesting; telling the very conventional story of a family haunted by ghosts. The generic nature of the plot only adds to overwhelming boredom created by the lack of scares and atmosphere. Failing to explore any new territory at all, Wan limits his scope and therefore tells a story we have seen a few dozen times before in more superior pictures. But if the narrative fails to hold our interest, at least 'Insidious : Chapter 2' has relatable and personable characters right? Sadly not. While I like both Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne as actors, they are hopeless in the face of such poor direction and a terrible screenplay written by regular Wan collaborator Leigh Whannell. The supporting cast is in a word, atrocious. None of the characters stand out in any way and serve as basic props for the antagonist to plague.

Part 'Poltergeist', 'part 'The Amityville Horror' and even part 'The Shining', 'Insidious : Chapter 2' delights in ripping off entire set pieces from much better films while not being a particle scarier. As a massive horror fan, I feel personally insulted that a filmmaker like Wan thinks that stealing ideas from some of the most influential and best loved shockers of all time while treading out a sequel under the name of a mediocre but more successful original is what counts as good multiplex horror. Well Mr. Wan, I can tell you that us horror fans are much cleverer than what you give us credit for and we will not stand for such blatant plagiarism and such obvious audience pandering. You may earn millions but at the end of the day, you are destined to become nothing more than a tiny footnote on the tombstone of a sadly dying genre.

I was extremely close to walking out of 'Insidious : Chapter 2' but after falling asleep in my cinema chair for the first time, I didn't want 'Insidious : Chapter 2' to be the first movie I would ever walk out of too. But believe me, I was one jump scare away from running out of the empty theatre, swearing at the top of my voice.