Frighteningly bad
The horror mastermind behind the Saw series, James Wan (The Conjuring), very nearly struck gold with the first Insidious. Though the premise had been done before, the first half was a very tight, masterfully directed horror film. Unfortunately, the second act fell flat, and the ending was laughable at best.
Recently, Wan came back strong with The Conjuring, a well-crafted and critically acclaimed horror film that mixed scares with character development, and showed he has grown as a director. Thus, the bar has been set high for Insidious: Chapter 2. Can Wan perfect the promising concept of Insidious and make one of the best haunted house films of this generation?
Wan, ever conscious that expectations are nearly impossible to meet, does something nobody expected: He turns the horror genre on its head and crafts a blistering satire on everything wrong with the genre today. Forget Cabin in the Woods’ subtlety-free, in-your-face attack of horror; Insidious 2 reigns supreme as the most nuanced and mature satire made in recent memory.
Make a checklist in your head of every horrible scary movie cliche you can think of. Someone hiding in the closet? Check. Predictable mirror scares? Check. Cheap jump scares? Check. Baby dolls, cribs, abandoned hospitals, rocking chairs moving by themselves? All present. Wan masterfully exposes each and every one of these as the gimmicks they are by essentially making a montage of cringe-worthy cliches. Each is surrounded by little to no tension or suspense and, as a result, falls completely flat.
I can see Wan sending a message to every other horror director working today: Cheap gimmicks are no substitute for plot or character development. At one point, a character steps on a random baby doll while shuffling through an abandoned house. It shrieks “Mama!” in an attempt to make the audience jump. This scene is Wan at his finest. Not only is the scene not scary in the least, the absurdity of a random baby doll with no business being in the scene added some sharp humor to the moment, which the audience definitely enjoyed. In just one scene, Wan is able to make viewers burst with laughter while chastising his contemporaries for being lazy, demonstrating how cheesy their latest efforts have become. As long as he isn’t actually trying to create a scary movie, Wan shines.
The actors do a magnificent, nuanced job of impersonating the wooden planks found in other scary movies. The tongue-in-cheek impersonations are spot-on as the characters recite lines that could have only been written in the finest of third-grade classrooms. I was able to predict the twists of Insidious 2 before the movie was halfway over, an obvious attack on modern movies’ reliance on implausible plot twists to entertain the viewer. Wan doesn’t even bother to build any suspense in the first act of the movie and simply charges headfirst into the thick of the plot without laying the groundwork first. Perhaps this is a statement about viewers who crave sensationalism and special effects over a strong story. I can only hope all of this brilliant commentary was intended.
The film’s most impressive aspect is Wan’s extremely layered use of humor. Of course the brilliant film has the audience laughing throughout, but the real genius lies deeper. In modern horror movies, there are often comic relief characters to brighten the mood of the picture and appeal to a wider audience.
Unfortunately, in Wan’s eyes, this only serves to ruin the mood the movies try so hard to create. In Insidious 2, already a comedy, the characters that would have served as comic relief are actually the least funny in the film. Their jokes fall flat and the absurdity of their lines actually ruins the sleek, smart mood of this film. Wan is elegantly observing that the role of comic relief has become overstated in modern horror. By exaggerating the lame jokes and poorly executed lowbrow humor the “comic relief” archetypes are expected to provide, he effectively ruins the atmosphere of Insidious 2. Take a moment to wrap your head around that. Before you suggest that Wan may have simply made a huge mistake, let me again emphasize the jokes in this film are so terrible and out of place that they simply can’t be genuine.
My only qualm with Insidious 2 is that Wan, perhaps too talented for his own good, actually does a fine job directing. The camera work is reminiscent of Orson Welles’ as the camera becomes part of the scene, interacting with the characters. The cinematography is innovative. Such talent behind the scenes put the idea into my head, “What if this is a sincere attempt at a scary movie?” However, after remembering how terribly cliche, boring and uninspired the rest of the film is, I concluded there is no way the mastermind behind The Conjuring and Saw could have been serious.
With Insidious: Chapter 2, Wan offers other filmmakers an ultimatum: Step up your game or get out. I will offer my own advice to other modern horror directors: Throw in the towel. You can try all you want to redeem yourselves, but with this masterpiece, James has already Wan.
