Repetition, no suspense ruins scary film
I have seen Gus Van Sant’s film “Gerry” in which Matt Damon and Casey Affleck walk in the desert. That is all that happens. I have seen Michael Haneke’s “The Seventh Continent,” which consists of a family going about their daily routines for more than an hour before … well, I wouldn’t want to give away the ending. I have seen “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” which is a 150-minute Turkish film where a group of policemen and detectives drive a criminal around the countryside, trying to get him to confess where he buried a body. All of these films are incredibly slow moving, but are brilliant and merit debate and analysis. “Insidious: Chapter 2” is more boring than any of those films and it has absolutely nothing to say.
One really has to have seen the original 2010 “Insidious” film to try to understand the incredibly convoluted plot of this sequel. In the first film, Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson), Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) and their children were haunted by ghosts and other apparitions with so much white makeup that it looked like pancake batter. Their son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), was in a coma, and throughout the course of the film, it was revealed that all of these horrors were linked to the father’s past.
The sequel is nothing more than more of the same. For one hour and 46 minutes, the characters hear a creepy noise and walk through the house slowly and quietly. They look here and there while suddenly the soundtrack gets low and there is a loud “BOOM,” then something pops into the frame. That is all that happens for, I repeat, one hour and 46 minutes. Now, if someone comes up behind you and yells, “Boo!” really loud, you will probably jump. A child can do that. There is no genuine tension or suspense built up. Since there is no character development or narrative thrust, none of this hooey has any impact. It is infantile nonsense with little logic to any of the occurrences. The whole film blasts eerie images and loud noises at the audience to startle them. While I am not for one minute asking for another “Scary Movie” spoof, the “Insidious” films are ripe for riffing. They are straight-faced, humorless, serious and utterly ridiculous at the same time. One of the only positive comments to make about the film is that the cinematography is well done at times. If only the camerawork was used to capture something of value.
The filmmakers steal from many other horror films so it feels like a slapdash hodgepodge of pieces from better films and not a new product. Some of the victims are “Poltergeist,” “The Amityville Horror,” “The Haunting,” “The Shining,” “Psycho,” and “Carnival of Souls” (which is shown on one of the televisions in the film).
One reason this film is so disappointing is because the director, James Wan, directed “The
Conjuring,” which was released just a few months ago. While it is no masterpiece of the genre, it is a solid, economical film that had interesting characters and much more expertly executed frights.
“Insidious: Chapter 2” is the type of film young teenagers go to see to giggle and titter during, pretending they are scared.