Surprisingly not a letdown

Rating: 7/10 (24 September 2013)

I think this is the first horror movie I've seen in theatres since Sinister, so it was nice to get the authentic, terrifying experience that you can only get at the cinema. My favourite part was how the girls sitting behind me talked nervously throughout the whole film, screamed at the scary parts, and then at the end, said it wasn't that scary. Some people. Insidious 2 picks up right after the horrific events of the first film. Dalton's astral projection days seem to be behind him, the Lambert family is safe and everything is honky dory...Well almost everything While the police are investigating Elise Rainier's death, the Lamberts are forced to move into Josh's childhood home (you know, that place where he was haunted by that black witch for years and years). In the new house, things are fine for about ten minutes, then Renai (Rose Byrne) and Josh's mom Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) start seeing and hearing things again. Dalton, who we were all hoping would just go the F*** to sleep like a normal kid, starts seeing dead people again. They are all extremely freaked. Worse still, there is something a little off about Josh (Patrick Wilson).
Luckily Elise's old friend Carl (Steve Coulter) arrives help investigate the cause of the hauntings this time around. He wears a trench coat, boasts a distractingly fake looking beard, and sports a pair of vicious sexual offender bifocal glasses, but other than that he's pretty cool. Things take a terrifying turn as Carl, Lorraine, Specs and Tucker (Elise's loyal assistants) delve further into the case of the Bride in Black, who has been following Josh since he was a child. Can they uncover the unsettling truth about this malevolent spirit before it tears the Lambert family apart?
While not quite as terrifying as the first of the franchise, Insidious 2 offers its fair share of scares, and is by no means a letdown. I feel like Whannell really outdid himself writing this script. It ties in beautifully with the first movie and features a very creepy backstory detailing the origin of the antagonist, The Bride in Black. The subplot, in which Lorraine, Carl, Specs and Tucker investigate the origin of the Bride in Black is very suspenseful and intense. These scenes offer tons of scares and are just plain disturbing. The scenes taking place in the Further are also suspenseful, and resolve some questions left over from the first film. Josh's transformation throughout the film is simply terrifying. Wilson turns in a strong performance portraying what turns out to be a rather complicated character. Similar to its predecessor, Insidious 2 contains a few boarder line cheesy scenes in the latter half of the film, but nothing as extreme as Darth Goatfeet from Insidious. There were also a couple pieces of dialogue in this film that could be summed up as silly too, but they made me laugh so I can't fault the writer for that.
I didn't have high expectations for this film because honestly I didn't see the need for a sequel. Hollywood has a notorious track record for beating the dead horse and churning out sequels like sixteen year old chicks pop out kids. I was wrong. This movie was about as good as an unplanned sequel to a horror movie can be. Again I applaud Whannell's storytelling and ability to make this sequel a relevant part of modern horror. I know that I will be buying this movie when it comes out on DVD, it's a necessary piece of any horror collection.