The haunted-house genre has proved fruitful for Australian filmmaker James Wan, whose low-budget scarers "Insidious" and "The Conjuring" earned generally favorable reviews and combined to gross more than $350 million worldwide. But according to many film critics, Wan's latest such effort, "Insidious: Chapter 2," doesn't have anything new to offer.
In a review for The Times, Robert Abele wrote that Wan and co-writer Leigh Whannell "confidently line up their ducks in a row for more of the same half-shocks, fraught wanderings, horror-repurposed items ... and garish PG-13 apparitions. But after the pleasurable free fall into old-fashioned nightmare artistry that was last summer's 'The Conjuring,' this busy-yet-dull sequel feels like Wan robotically flexing his manipulation of fright-film signposts, an exercise more silly than sinister."
The New York Times' Jeannette Catsoulis called the film "a mess from start to finish" and added, "'Insidious: Chapter 2' is the kind of lazy, halfhearted product that gives scary movies a bad name. From its robotic acting to its generic props (enough already with the self-motivated children’s toys), this shoddy sequel, tacked together with the cynicism of a carnival barker, suggests that the director, James Wan, is long overdue for a vacation."
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