Nato – James Wan
There’s a large contingency of James Wan haters out there, so I’m sure you’re thankful for the director’s apparent retirement from horror, but I’m thankful for a very different reason – well, two reasons. I’ve already been called out for my love of *almost* all things Wan, Dead Silence aside, and this year saw two of his strongest films yet in The Conjuring and Insidious Chapter 2. I, for one, am sad the director may never scare the living daylights out of audiences again, and for those of you naysayers out there, I’m sorry – James Wan is one of the most stylistic horror voices of our generation, and it’s a shame to see him go.
I’ve written about The Conjuring over and over again already, so I really don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Wan’s recounting of Ed and Lorraine Warren’s most “active” case just begs to be discussed. It’s a ghost story with terrifying depth, connectable characters, dynamic performances, and of course, one super-creepy puppet. Mix in Wan’s magnificent grasp on atmospheric terror, and The Conjuring becomes one sinisterly spooky tale that rises above other paranormal haunters that are happy copying instead of innovating.
Insidious Chapter 2 is a different beast though, because my positive review was in the critical minority. So many complaints against Wan’s sequel were ridiculous though, and this is my favorite:
If there is a fundamental flaw in Chapter 2, it’s that it will make absolutely no sense unless you’ve seen the first one.
You’re going to complain about a sequel, BEING A SEQUEL? Oh wait, here’s another good one:
Considerably less grounded in any kind of recognizable reality than the first chapter.
…a movie that creates some ghostly purgatory where a child’s soul gets stuck, opening his body for a malevolent spirit to possess? Oh, right, sorry, because I forgot that kind of shit happens every day. Right, Insidious Chapter 2 just really brought the franchise to unbelievable territory by continuing the mythology…
No, James Wan did a perfectly fantastic job of continuing the Insidious story, and Leigh Whannell wrote a script that not only addressed so many open moments from the original, but posed new questions to inevitably be answered by yet another sequel. Bring on Insidious Chapter 3, I say!