Director Report Card: James Wan (2013) - Part Two

6. Insidious: Chapter 2

With the release of “The Conjuring,” James Wan had seemingly started the next chapter of his career. He'd soon be directing big budget blockbusters and have his own production company. However, a matter remained to be resolved. “Insidious” had been a hit, the success that allowed him to make “The Conjuring.” And Blumhouse is in the business of sequels, squeezing all the life out of the “Paranormal Activity” franchise until it was bled dry. Jason Blum insisted he wouldn't make a second “Insidious” without Wan and Leigh Whannall's involvement. Wan himself, expressing some frustration with the way “Saw” progressed without him, didn't want to abandon “Insidious” either. So a simple enough solution was decided on: The director would do both. He jumped over to New Line and started a new horror series with “The Conjuring.” Two months later, “Insidious: Chapter 2” would come out from Blumhouse. I guess being so in-demand that two separate studios want to work with you is probably a sweet deal for a filmmaker. Would it produce compelling cinema though?

Picking up shortly after the end of the first film, the police are questioning Renai Lambert over why the dead body of psychic Elise Rainier was in her house. Naturally, her husband is the prime suspect in the homicide. Renai has started to notice her husband is acting strange too. Josh wants to forget everything strange that happened and get on with their lives, despite the ghostly activity continuing as the family stays in mother-in-law Lorraine's house. Renai is right to be suspicious: When he astral projected into the Further, Josh's soul was left behind and now the spirit of a notorious serial killer is possessing his body. Lorraine and the surviving members of Elise's ghost hunter team attempt to unravel this mystery while Renai does what she can to protect her children from the thing inhabiting her husband's body. Ultimately, Dalton will have to use his abilities to enter the Further to rescue his dad.

The first “Insidious” hinted at the idea that childhood trauma is always revisited on the next generation, that the pain we experience as kids tend to influence what kind of parents we become. The sequel, smartly, foregrounds this idea further. In “Chapter 2,” Josh has now made the full jump from being an abused kid to becoming an abuser himself. He emotionally manipulates his wife and, by the end, is threatening to murder his kids. (Via an extended homage to “The Shining,” the ultimate example of using a ghost story as a metaphor for parental abuse.) Granted, this isn't technically Josh's fault. The ghost possessing him was also shaped and warped by a cartoonishly evil parent. Even in death, his mother's voice compels him to kill. This provides a narrative out for the dad character, preventing “Insidious: Chapter 2” from becoming an especially deep exploration of its theme. At the same time, at least the sequel is willing to follow through on the ideas present in the first one.  

Something I criticized about the first “Insidious” for how goofy and unintimidating I found its antagonists. Smartly, James Wan and Leigh Whannell realized that the Lipstick-Faced Demon was not going to become their next Jigsaw. They instead pivoted to the second most popular ghosts from the first movie, the so-called Bride in Black. (So obviously derivative of Susan Hill's the Woman in Black and a hundred other ghosts throughout folklore.) An elaborate backstory is invented for the briefly glimpsed spectre. The Bride is a crossdressing serial killer, a man named Parker who was forced to live as a girl by his insane mother, prompting him to dress up as a woman when he murdered his victims. That a mainstream horror movie still doing the “murderous transvestite” trope in 2013 was kind of surprising. Wan and Whannall have absolutely no interest in exploring any deeper meaning to this particular cliché. Indeed, the Bride in Black is not developed any further beyond this idea, existing as nothing but a spectral boogeyman/woman to antagonize the family.

While you can certainly question the taste of crafting a back story like this for your cheesy horror movie villain, I do think “Insidious: Chapter 2” did make a good choice in one regard. In the first film, the Lambert family was tormented by a whole host of ghouls with silly names. Aside from the Bride and the Lipstick-Faced Demon, there were the Doll Girl and that Trent Reznor lookalike and probably some others I've already forgotten. None made much of an impression. By centralizing its story around one primary antagonist, “Chapter 2” feels tells a more focused story. Similarly, while the evil spirits of the first “Insidious” had the vague motivation of wanting Dalton's power, “Chapter 2” has a very clear, understandable goal for its baddie. The former murderer wants more life, another life separate from his goading monster of a mother. It all works a lot more smoothly than a Darth Maul lookalike crawling around on the walls. 

I found the mythology the first “Insidious” attempted to weave to be extremely silly, drawing from New Age hokum about astral projection and the spiritual realm. “Chapter 2” doesn't dismiss any of these ideas. If anything, it focuses on them more, the sequel spending far more time in the misty, dark Further. However, Wan and Whannell did cook up some clever ideas with all its ghostly nonsense. It would seem time is nonlinear in the Further, allowing “Insidious: Chapter 2” to revisit the events of the first film and its own prologue from the other side. This creates some genuinely amusing surprises, the sequel folding in own itself and the events of part one. Rather than focus in on the silly stuff about the rules of the spirit realm, “Chapter 2” comes up with interesting narrative swerves of its own.

You can tell that Whannell, cranking out this script around the same time he was probably writing “Cooties” and whatever “The Mule” is, might've had to rush this one. “Insidious: Chapter 2”splits its screen time among two sets of characters for long stretches. We have the plot of the Lamberts, Josh's body being host to an evil spirit while his wife starts to catch on. Running parallel to that is Specs and Tucker from the first film, teaming up with Lorraine and another colleague of the late Elise, investigating the origins of the Bride in Black. The trio of ghost hunters were a high-light of the first film and, one suspects, there was a bit of a pull between wanting to tell the next part of the Lambert's story and give the fans more of these guys. Or, maybe, the production could only afford name actors like Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne for a few days. Dividing the movie between two separate groups is a little awkward, sometimes leading to “Insidious: Chapter 2” having a lumpy pacing. 

Another issues with this divide in the story is that one of these plots is a lot more compelling than the other. The coolest idea present in the story of the Lamberts is the gruesome inclusion that, as long as an undead spirit is inhabiting Josh's body, it is slowly falling apart. I like that little touch of body horror, of his teeth falling out. However, that plot thread is devoted to Renai trying to discover something we, the audience, is already aware of. Meanwhile, watching a trio of quasi-incompetent ghost hunters stumble around a dusty, cobweb strewn asylum in search of answers is the kind of silly horror theatrics I can get into. The bumbling investigators record some of their search to, drawing direct parallels to the found footage movies “Insidious: Chapter 2” was essentially looking to replace. 

Those scenes, of these hopelessly in-over-their-own-heads guys, rummaging through a spooky old hospital represents “Insidious: Chapter 2” probably at its best. I'm a sucker for classic horror atmosphere. Layering a setting in dust and spider webs already goes a long way towards making me like a movie. A slowly moving rocking horse is far creepier than any of the sequel's pasty-faced ghosts. Unfortunately, that subtly is in short supply here. “Chapter 2” utilizes blaring jump scares more than the original did. The soundtrack shrieks obnoxiously multiple times throughout, the audience always aware of the incoming noise thanks to the film growing suspiciously quiet beforehand. It's a wild abuse of, by far, my least favorite modern horror cliché, not generating scares so much as it leaves my ear drums battered and bruised. 

The constant barrage of deafening scares are hard to take seriously. As is an utterly hilarious sequence, when one of the reoccurring bad ghosts are tossed through a window in one smooth, continuous movement. It's another example of Wan and his team mistaking silly for scary... However, the longer “Insidious: Chapter 2” goes on, the sillier its antics get. The finale involve a frying pan being weaponized and some surprisingly theatrical melee combat. I laughed and I can't help but think I was supposed to. Whether Wan and his team realized the first movie got goofy as shit and knowingly went for camp this time out, or if I simply missed any intentional tongue-in-cheek quality in part one, it's clearly present here. “Insidious: Chapter 2” gets a little silly with it, knowingly so, and is all the better for it.

On account of getting killed off last time, Lin Shaye's Elise has a smaller role in the sequel, her part mostly being assumed by Steve Coulter's Carl. He's a psychic with the gimmick of communicating with the spirit world via die with letters imprinted on them. That's a dynamic idea and Coulter is affable in the part. He ends up as the straight man to Whannell and Angus Sampson, who remain comedic characters. As “Chapter 2” goes on and becomes sillier, you get the impression that the cast is absolutely in on the joke. Patrick Wilson, especially when playing the grimacing serial killer, is happily hamming it up. Danielle Bisutti, as the abusive ghost mother, also abandons all good taste in pursuit of playing a cartoonishly evil figure. These cast members, I do believe, know that they are being funny. That furthers my impression that we are not meant to take this motion picture entirely seriously. 

“Insidious: Chapter 2” has the same cinematographer as “Insidious: Chapter 1,” in the form of John R. Leonetti. It marks the last collaboration between Wan and the esteemed director of “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation,” who was pursuing a directorial career of his own once again. The sequel doesn't look that different from its predecessor. It is often too dark, with more overcast greyness and greenness to its look than I prefer. The last third gets a little shaky too. However, there is a flash of some vibrant reds in one scene, which I appreciate, and a few smooth camera movements that aren't bad. Wan is slowly moving away from the bland visuals of “Saw” and its like, which was hopelessly passé by 2013. 

At the box office, “Insidious: Chapter 2” still made a killing for Blumhouse and the other four production companies with logos before the opening credits. The sequel was made for five times the original's one million dollar budget and grossed 162 million, still providing a profitable return by any measure. Critically, the sequel was overshadowed by Wan's other horror movie with Patrick Wilson in 2013. That's a better movie, so I'm not surprised. However, I do think “Insidious: Chapter 2” is a marginal improvement over the first one, embracing the silliness of its own material while also finding a more consistent antagonist to base its story around. The sequel ends on a much more upbeat note than the original, before an uninspired extra scene is tagged on. This is essentially Wan bringing closure to the story he started in the first one while leaving the door open for further sequels that other directors could take over, suggesting he truly did have some personal attachment to these characters. [Grade: C+]