Director James Wan was on a bit of a roll, with Insidious and The Conjuring. Well, with Insidious: Chapter 2, that roll crashes into a concrete, steel-enforced wall that Jesus himself built while reminiscing about his carpentry days.
This latest attempt to make a haunted-house movie with a small budget is a catastrophe. Wan basically uses the same tricks—smoke machines, green lights, practical makeup and crappy music—to try to get scares out of a formula that clearly had a short shelf life.
This one involves Josh (Patrick Wilson), the father from the first film, acting a little strange after his trip into another dimension to retrieve his son. His wife (Rose Byrne) suspects that something must be wrong, because there are still funny things happening with her baby monitor. The movie wants to be a poor man’s The Shining, with Wilson going all Jack Nicholson-wacky, and Byrne doing her best Shelley Duvall impersonation.
It’s terrible—but it’s raking in nice box office, so, as with the Paranormal Activity films, this isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
Insidious: Chapter 2 is playing at theaters across the valley.