More good spooky fun, Yet too much explaining takes a bite

Rating: 7/10 (24 May 2014)

Picking up right at the end of the original, the police question Renai (Byrne) about the unusual death of Elise (Lin Shaye) with suspicion towards husband Josh (Wilson). The Lambert family moves into mother Lorraine's house where Josh grew up. As implied at the end of the original, Josh's earthly body is now inhabited by the treacherous spirit of the witch that plagued him as a child and now as an adult. Meanwhile, nerd investigators Specs (Leigh Whannel) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) meet a former colleague of Elise's named Carl (Coulter) who are all called in to help when Lorraine and Renai want answers to Josh's strange behavior. James Wan and Leigh Whannell's story suffers from a common problem that most sequels have, and that is they have to explain more and more that the first one never had to. Chapter 2 expands our knowledge of the further, and it shows us that this is where Josh's spirit is stuck in and eventually Elise's spirit comes to help. We learn an entire back story of the witch which turns out to be serial killer Parker Crane (Tyler Griffin) who was so messed up by his mother (Danielle Bisutti) he became a killer. There are many plot lines at work here, and even though some are quite clever, like showing scenes from the original and getting to see what caused them in this one, something is lost in all the explaining. It seems like Wan and Whannell threw everything on the table to make a story and used everything they came up with. Most of this is spooky and effective but there is so much information to process, the audience is thinking and sorting instead of reacting and experiencing. James Wan's excellent direction create some jump scares and some hair raising moments which makes this sequel a lot of fun, it just doesn't reach the intense scares and jumps the original had. One scene that did match the scare level of the original is a scene with Dalton (Ty Simpkins) waking up and his room full of ghosts is exceptionally frightening. Some of the end stages of Josh's possession are scary and Wilson is very good in these scenes. There is still plenty to like here and the movie is quite scary, but the overflowing storyline distracts from the overall effectiveness. The end scene hints at the series moving forward and possibly the return of the Lipstick demon from the original.