Friday, 13 September 2013

"Insidious: Chapter 2" (The Guardian 13/09/13)


Insidious: Chapter 2 (15) 105 mins ***

2011’s Insidious was one of those rattly New Horror funhouses that irked the purists yet loosed a lot of spare change from jumpier cinemagoers’ pockets. For this inevitable sequel, co-creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell return to their Saw playbook, installing spooked parents Patrick Wilson (complete with newly suspect squarejaw) and Rose Byrne (now the best hysteric in the movies) at grandma Barbara Hershey’s house before shifting backwards and sideways around them to establish a tricky continuum with the first film’s events. Again it tends to treat its gotcha moments as throwaway wind-ups designed to spill and thus sell more popcorn, but the narrative reframing – opening up a Twin Peaks-like multiverse in which further chapters may yet unfold – is ambitious, and Wan remains a crafty enough director to draw one’s eye warily across the frame. You shouldn’t feel quite so daft for flinching this time round.

Insidious: Chapter 2 is in cinemas nationwide.

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