Insidious: Chapter 2

Insidious: Chapter 2 reunites director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell for a sequel to their 2010 horror sleeper about a child possessed by ghosts. It also bears an uncanny resemblance to Wan’s superior The Conjuring, which was released only two months ago. Both movies are about families tormented by evil spirits in comically creaky houses (a little WD-40 would clear that right up), but the Insidious films substitute the docudrama trappings of The Conjuring for a couple of bumbling ghost hunters named Tucker and Specs. Patrick Wilson plays a suburban father inhabited by a deceased serial killer, and he's about as malevolent as Joe Montana. There are a few legitimate pop-out-of-your-seat moments here, but they're mostly due to the nauseatingly loud soundtrack spikes, and in total, Insidious: Chapter 2 inspires fewer shrieks of terror than howls of derision.