Above Average: 6.5

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2019)

I believe that part of what made the first Insidious such a talking point was that noone saw it coming. Like Paranormal Activity before it, it came out with a minimalist advertising campaign that only showed enough to get people interested. However, standards have changed since then, and on the heels of the director's The Conjuring comes Insidious: Chapter 2, charged with the unenviable task of shouldering the weight of its predecessors. The main fault of the first Insidious film was that it got more unbelievable and less scary as it went on, culminating in a kinda ridiculous final act taking place in purgatory as imagined by overexcited horror buffs. Chapter 2 is at least more consistent in its quality and believability, with no jarring shifts like the one described above. However, what is has in consistency and story, it lacks in scares. While there are certainly some chilling moments, they are nowhere near as frequent as they were inthe first film. This is somewhat disappointing, because James Wan is certainly capable of packing a higher number of scares into the same length of time. And with more subtlety.