Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

“Switch on the lights, fool!” No, these aren’t the words of B.A. Baracus berating one of Murdock’s deranged decisions – it’s actually a classic Roger Ebert exclamation, referring to the irrationally photophobic behaviour of Sinister’s lead protagonist, Ellison. The late, great American film critic was right to feel aggrieved – clearly, writer, Leigh Whannell, and director, James Wan, were too! Enough of the uninspired plot contrivances already! Any normal person would switch on the lights if they were being plagued by mysterious bumps in the night. The duo who gave us 2011’s surprise paranormal hit, Insidious, set out to prove that instinctive logic still has pride of place amongst horror’s conventions, producing unexpected results.

Everybody from the first film reprises their role, picking up from where we were left hanging precariously off of the filmic cliff face. Lorraine’s (Barbara Hershey) digs form the new unusually agrestic accommodation for the Lamberts and they’ve inadvertently brought the hauntings with them. The sequel lends luminance (pun shamefully intended) to the inexplicable creaks and knocks that had us quavering behind our popcorn two years ago, using a somewhat tangled Back to the Future-esque anomaly where The Further’s flouting of definite spacetime laws allow future events to occur in the past…Make sense? Didn’t think so! Evidently, what we formerly assumed was “ghostly activity”, is actually being perpetrated by an astral projected Josh (Patrick Wilson), sucking the story into an interminable bidimensional, nonlinear oblivion.

Danielle Bisutti is extremely creepy as Mother

There was no saving this once Whannell and Wan made it overly cerebral for the sake of the two films entwining; they just continued, substituting the mystery behind intangible demonic entities with the evil souls of mass murderers along the way – granted, they’re bone-chillingly eerie, but something – both in the scares and the entire film – is lost with the absence of the unknown. 

Rating: 3/5