{"id":26245,"date":"2013-09-16T08:54:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-16T12:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=26245"},"modified":"2013-09-16T08:54:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T12:54:41","slug":"insidious-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/09\/insidious-chapter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cInsidious: Chapter 2\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Simply put, if you\u2019ve never seen 2010\u2019s \u201cInsidious,\u201d then you should not see \u201cInsidious: Chapter 2.\u201d This is not to say that you shouldn\u2019t see \u201cInsidious\u201d and then see \u201cChapter 2,\u201d as a matter of fact it would do you well to see the first film as closely as you can to the second. \u201cChapter 2\u201d demands that you have an intense familiarity with its predecessor and isn\u2019t afraid to leave you behind if you don\u2019t. I\u2019ll give you a quick recap, please be advised that the following section contains spoilers for \u201cInsidious,\u201d though if they really are spoilers then that means that you\u2019ve never seen \u201cInsidious\u201d and therefore aren\u2019t the audience for \u201cChapter 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) had successfully rescued the soul of his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) from the purgatory-like dimension known as The Further. This of course came as a great relief to his family, including his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) and mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), not just because they had Dalton back, but because freaky things would assumedly stop happening around his Earth-bound body. However, paranormal investigator Elise (Lin Shaye) sensed something was wrong with the returning Josh. She discovered that his body was actually inhabited by an evil spirit who then killed her and rejoined the family, likely set on killing them as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The new film takes place right after the first one. By \u201cright after\u201d I mean that it continues a scene that was cut off for dramatic effect. The first act of the film is very much like the first act of the original. Freaky things happen around the Lambert house and it\u2019s clear that they\u2019re not out of trouble just yet. Renai is scared out of her wits, but \u201cJosh\u201d insists they\u2019re not in any danger. But at least he can\u2019t deny that the scariness is caused by spirits this time, so there\u2019s no frustrating journey where he eventually comes to accept something that we already knew from the commercials.<\/p>\n

The spirits from \u201cInsidious\u201d were pretty loosely defined; this film does a lot more to identify the source of the terror. There\u2019s a whole backstory with a serial killer and his abusive mother. For once I don\u2019t think it was a good idea to develop the villains as characters. There\u2019s something about understanding them that makes them seem less threatening. They were much scarier as unknowns whose random attacks lent an uneasy unpredictability to the proceedings.<\/p>\n

I liked the way the story was structured, with layered approaches to time, identities, and planes of existence. I can\u2019t say I was able to follow all of it (I\u2019m still not sure which violent episodes were carried out by the serial killer and which ones were carried out by his mother), but I got the gist enough to know when the film was giving us some clever payoffs. And that includes the details that go back to the first film. But again, be warned, you really have to have a memory of details from the first film, especially in a scene that is played again nearly shot for shot but this time with a new context.<\/p>\n

The puzzling plot works to the film\u2019s advantage, but not a lot else works. The scares are less effective once they start coming with explanations. The Lambert family is less fun this time around and the characters who are supposed to be fun (like the bumbling comic relief scientists) are just annoying. Also, Patrick Wilson doesn\u2019t bring enough madness to the role of the possessed killer, whose family-threatening antics are straight out of \u201cThe Shining.\u201d If you were a big fan of \u201cInsidious,\u201d don\u2019t let me stop you from seeing \u201cChapter 2.\u201d But if you didn\u2019t like it, you won\u2019t be won over by this follow-up and if you didn\u2019t see it, you won\u2019t be able to win a game of catch-up.<\/p>\n

One and a Half Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cInsidious: Chapter 2\u201d is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of terror and violence, and thematic elements. Its running time is 105 minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Simply put, if you\u2019ve never seen 2010\u2019s \u201cInsidious,\u201d then you should not see \u201cInsidious: Chapter 2.\u201d This is not to say that you shouldn\u2019t see \u201cInsidious\u201d… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}