a bit of a mess

Rating: 4/10 (31 July 2014)

After just having seen this film, I can tell you it's a convoluted hodgepodge of themes, styles and rip-offs from other films that ends up just a giant mess.
Is it a ghost story? A haunting? A murder mystery? Paranormal investigation? Inter-dimensional time travel? It's all of these, which means it has a pretty big identity crisis, coming off as a schizophrenic jumble of half-realized ideas and tried, horror clichés.
The jump scares are again plentiful, but are wasted on horror vets as we've seen all this before. The jarring audio cues are back from the first film, again letting you know via sudden, high-decibel jolts that THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE SCARY PART.
The cast reprise their roles from the first film, including the duo of paranormal researchers who provide unnecessary comic relief and tend to suck all the tension out of any scene they are in.
Insidious 2 suffers from too many things going on at once. I found I wanted to know more about Parker and his story than anything else but like many things in the film, it was never explained. There is also another tedious, open-ending to this film, no doubt allowing for a third installment to make more money.
James Wan shows potential as a horror director and I quite enjoyed "the Conjuring" but he's not in the same league as classic films such as "the Exorcist", "The Shining", "the Others" and "The Sixth Sense" and I'm not sure he ever will be. I guess we'll see.
Oddly enough, the high point of both these films for me was the beautiful old homes and sets they shot in. I love that style of architecture and it was a real treat to spend some time there.