Insidious: Chapter 2

Welcome to the Blumhouse

My pre-viewing expectations for Insidious: Chapter 2 were pretty abysmal. My fears first and foremost stemmed from it being a horror sequel from studio Blumhouse Productions, known for milking a franchise for every possible cent, which, while being a brilliant marketing strategy, sometimes sacrifices quality in favor of quantity. But Insidious: Chapter 2 excels not only by being genuinely frightening, but in areas horror movies aren’t particularly known for being fantastic in, such as scripting, storytelling, and perhaps most foreign to the genre, acting (yay Patrick Wilson!). I say this a lot, but this time I absolutely mean it: Chapter 2 is one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in a long time.

The plot refreshingly continues right where the first one left off without any bizarre location, genre, or cast changes in between. When was the last time that happened? In light of the recent supernatural events in the first Insidious (you actually need to be familiar with the events of the first to fully enjoy the second, which is crazy) the Lambert family relocates while the father Josh (Wilson) is accused of murdering a fallen main character from the original.

Sinister

Writing on the wall

Sinister is a horror movie that wants you to feel haunted when you’re done watching it. Its opening scene, a choppy camcorder-quality snippet showing a gruesome four-way murder, certainly makes the audience feel like it will. It has the staple ghostly bad guy and more demented little kids running around than a preschool, and is conveniently released into theaters just before Halloween. It has all the ingredients to be a success.

So, why isn’t it?

House at the End of the Street

The Review in the Middle of the Blog

(I wanted a title equally generic to ‘House at the End of the Street’.)

Hollywood seems to require that at least one horror film centered around a dysfunctional family’s move into a small countryside town littered with deadly nutcases be released per month, and House at the End of the Street is September’s offering.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, and in this case it almost isn’t. Almost. Even though its borderline infuriating title leads most to believe otherwise, the film makes intelligent decisions in its storytelling and horror sequences, and has just enough charm to play like it isn’t a carbon copy of, well, any other movie of its genre. Unfortunately for the film, the basis of the story has been so beaten to death (no pun intended) over the past many years that, unless it has a Cabin in the Woods-sized twist to contribute, it will be exiled by critics and shunned by audiences faster than you can say “decapitation.” Audiences demand innovative and sparkly new entertainment each time they walk into the theater, and House at the End of the Street walks a thin line between that and cliché Frankenstein.