By Melissa Antoinette Garza
I had been anticipating this film since it came out. For the most part, I love James Wan’s work. The dark action film Death Sentence, followed by his horror movies Sinister, the first Insidious, and especially The Conjuring were fantastic. His directing skills in those films showed in nearly every scene. His ability to build tension and anxiety in the viewer is amazing. Not sent Alexandre Aja came on to the scene, have I had a renewed faith in the horror genre.
Despite the bad reviews and harsh critiques, I still had high hopes for this movie. My husband Stephen and brother Geno went in thinking it was going to be horrible, but I resisted their thought process and went in with more excitement than I’ve had in a long time.
Then the movie started. It’s difficult to explain how many things were wrong with the movie, because it was just a mishmash of incoherent scenes that were “inspired” by other horror classics. There were long drawn out scenes of The Shining as a possessed Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) broke down walls with baseball bats in real time. There were aspects of Poltergeist as a deceased Elsie Rainier (Lin Shaye) portrays a tamed down Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) leading the real Josh and his son back to the real world.
The movie begins right when the first one ended, but despite that it seems like two entirely different series. Even though the first movie had similarities to the Poltergeist series, it was original in its own right. In the sequel it was just a blatant ripoff.
Sadly, there were a few effective scenes though not scary did peak interest. In one scene there is a picture of Patrick when he was younger and in the background an adult Patrick is there. Though, it’s explained, there’s no big revelation. It’s simply part of the story that he can through the other side go back to that time frame.
We also gain more insight into the old lady who essentially portrays a more over-the-top and angrier version of Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould) from Sleepaway Camp.
The whole movie in its entirety just felt like a bunch of muddled scenes thrown together. A lot of the ghostly apparitions were similar in style to those in The Conjuring, but for whatever reason Wan wasn’t able to capture the chills that were invoked in that film. Rather, they came off hokey. For most of the film, the entire room was laughing at how absurd some of the scenes were.
Even the acting was poor. I will say that Lin Shaye did a topknotch job. She seemed like one of the only ones who weren’t phoning in her performance. She gave her all as always and her presence was really the only treat.
Patrick Wilson who I adore as an actor was given little choice but to run rampant and yell dialogue that no human or demon would ever utter. It was exaggerated stupidity. There are plenty of lines in horror films that are over dramatic yet become iconic moments in horror history. Donald Pleasance’s dialogue in the Halloween series, is a perfect example. The difference is that Pleasance had a way of capturing his audience with his words. Even as Loomis uttered something as ridiculous as, “I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes… the devil’s eyes…” Pleasance sells it.
Here, even with Wilson’s great acting ability, he seemed not to give his all. Maybe, he realized how scrambled and confused as the film was and he just didn’t care, or maybe the character was so similar to that of The Conjuring he wanted to change it up a bit and instead found himself doing a reenactment of The Shining which came off as absurd.
Even Rose Byrne who portrayed Josh’s wife Renai didn’t show any type of real emotion. Renai ran around the house to escape Josh, but
she had little dialogue and other than calmly telling Josh that the evil hasn’t ended, is really non-essential to the plot. I understand that for most of the film Josh was possessed and Renai sensed something was wrong, but there was no real standoff initiated by her. She never opted to take her kids and leave or do anything other than fight back and fight for her kids when necessary. She was an old fashion damsel-in-distress, and as much as I despite the sexist portrayal of Tomb Raider style women with super strength who fear nothing, I also can’t stand the foolish woman who makes zero steps to protect herself and her children. I wish she was portrayed and given dialogue similar to Joanna (Katharine Ross) from The Stepford Wives. It shared slight parallels to the film where she had to fight to get her children away from a maniac. Whereas Joanna sought help from a psychiatrist and only returned to danger to save her children, Renai opted never to leave. She kept herself and her children in danger. She had zero personality and was simply there as basically Mrs. Lambert.
There isn’t much to say positive about this flick. It had a few cool shots, but even those were reminiscent of Wan’s other films. Everything in the movie lacked originality, creativity, or character development.
The conclusion was okay. It wasn’t much of a surprise. To its credit even though it left you guessing and left it open for a sequel, there is no jump scare nor is the new malevolence seen.
Sadly, I can’t recommend this. I really don’t know what anyone would get out of this other than to see the beautiful Lin Shaye shine as she always does.
I will say that I’m still holding out hope for The Conjuring 2. I will be devastated if Wan screws this one up. Rumors are circulating that it’s going to tackle The Amityville Horror. Though, I don’t expect it will surpass the original, I have to imagine it will surpass the hilarious atrocity that was the 2005 version with Ryan Reynolds. That film was so bad it was good. I’m hoping Wan’s version will just be fantastic.
As for Insidious 2, if you can rent it from Redbox as I did and you have an hour and a half to sit through it, you’ll get a few laughs, but don’t expect to be freaked out or to have the typical Wan experience.
Scared Stiff Rating: 3.5 out of 10 (the only reason it got this is because of the wonderful Lin Shaye)
