General News
James Wan’s INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 Reveals Some Pretty Scary Images
A haunted family struggles to uncover a terrifying secret that has left them dangerously connected to the spirit world in INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2, the latest nerve-twisting horror thriller from director James Wan (THE CONJURING) and screenwriter Leigh Whannell (SAW, INSIDIOUS).
FilmDistrict has come out with some frightening new images from the upcoming film.
INSIDIOUS centers on the troubles of the Lamberts, a suburban family who leave their haunted house for a new home, only to learn it’s not their house that is haunted – it’s their eldest son. INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 rejoins the family as they try to put their recent troubles behind them, but discover that the spirits that have tormented them are far from finished.
Working individually and collectively, director James Wan, screenwriter Leigh Whannell and producer Jason Blum have been responsible for some of the most influential, commercially successful and flat-out terrifying horror thrillers of the past decade.
In 2004 Wan and Whannell unleashed the groundbreaking and hugely popular Saw, which spawned a blockbuster franchise on which Whannell continued to serve as a writer (SAW II and III) and executive producer. Wan most recently helmed the acclaimed haunted-house tale, THE CONJURING, while Blum has shepherded such blood-curdling hits as PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and SINISTER to the screen. Together, the trio collaborated on the disturbing and original 2011 psychological horror thriller INSIDIOUS, a micro-budgeted that became the profitable theatrical release that year.
Now all three filmmakers are back – along with the entire cast of INSIDIOUS – with INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2, which continues the story of the Lambert family’s life-and-death struggle with malignant spirits bent on destroying their lives.
WARNING: There are major spoilers ahead, so go no further beyond the new photos if you want to be surprised when the film opens on Friday the 13th in September.
Photo credit: Matt Kennedy/FilmDistrict
Wan and Whannell took the unusual step of calling the film INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 because it picks up right where the first film ends. “Not too many sequels try that, but we loved the idea of creating back-to-back stories,” says Whannell. “You could almost watch them as one movie, or as chapters in the same story. We see Josh murder Elise, but Renai doesn’t see it and she’s not quite sure what’s going on. So at the start of the second film, everything seems back to normal, but slowly you realize something is terribly wrong.”
In addition to picking up the tale of the Lambert family where the original left off, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 explores a larger mythology and backstory for the characters, says Wan. “It’s really a bigger movie,” he says. “When we were making the first film, we had plans and ideas for a follow-up, but we didn’t push it all the way. We thought, ‘We’ll see. We’ll play with it and see how it goes. There may be a potential second storyline.’ And sure enough, when the first film did well, we could actually go back and pull out that second storyline and continue it.”
INSIDIOUS revolves around young Dalton Lambert, who has the ability to travel out of his physical body—a gift he inherits from his father, Josh. As a result of this ability, he is haunted by the spirit of a mysterious old woman and a red-faced demon who seek to possess his physical body. It’s also revealed that, as a boy, Josh was terrified by an old woman who would visit him at night. But his memories of that event were intentionally suppressed. INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 opens up the possibility that Josh was never actually healed – and that the old woman never left.
Wan and Whannell also folded in another, more familiar concept – albeit one seldom seen in the horror genre: time travel. The film ventures 25 years into the past to reveal the sinister events at the root of the evil that is haunting the Lamberts, tying up the unresolved mysteries of the first film and delving deeper inside the dark netherworld known as The Further.
“Because the first film was such a stylized and fantastical world, the time traveling aspect actually fit perfectly into the second film,” Wan says.
The filmmakers used the concept in an original way to bridge both films so that they could be viewed as two parts of a whole. In one instance, they show the back-story of coma-ward patient Parker Crane—a newly introduced character. But instead of using the traditional flashback method, the filmmakers reveal Crane’s troubled past via a journey back through time within The Further—a void-like area beyond time and space.
The film features a collection of nearly 20 ghouls – men and women of all ages and ethnicities who are dead but live on in The Further to torment living souls. In one scene, a group of young female ghouls who were serial-killer victims between 1970 and 1986 terrify Dalton Lambert in his attic bedroom. Some are wrapped in sheets, some in regular clothes, but all of them are dead.
Part of the sequel was filmed in Linda Vista Community Hospital in the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles. Originally opened in the 1920s, the hospital has served as a location for countless films, TV shows and music videos since it closed its doors in 1991. In the film, the location serves as Our Lady of Angels Hospital – the place where, in 1986, young Lorraine Lambert works as a nurse and, with her son, has a memorable encounter with Parker Crane.
The hospital is rumored to be haunted in real life, too. During shooting, Wan recalls the crew was moving equipment between floors and one of the grips had a spooky experience while he was standing alone.
“He said he felt a little hand come up and grab and hold his hand,” the director says. “Then he looked down, because thought maybe a bug or something had landed on his hand, but there was nothing there.”
Wan says he was surprised at the challenges making a worthy follow-up to INSIDIOUS presented, but it will be worth it if fans of the original respond positively. “Sequels are usually very hard to do right. I hope the people that loved the first one come back and watch the second one and can see the love that went into making it—that we didn’t just haphazardly throw it together—because we put a lot of thought into it. We just hope they really enjoy it.”
Produced by Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, Insidious) and Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity, Insidious), the sequel reteams the cast of the first film, including Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy, Watchmen, Little Children), Rose Byrne (X-Men: First Class, Bridesmaids, 28 Weeks Later), Barbara Hershey (Black Swan, The Portrait of a Lady), Lin Shaye (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber) and Ty Simpkins (Iron Man 3).
https://www.facebook.com/InsidiousMovie
https://twitter.com/InsidiousMovie
#Insidious2
0 comments