Everyone knows what it takes to make a good horror film.  The creepy dolls on the walls, the narrow hallways with dim lights, and the creaky floors all come together to make one hell of a movie.

Insidious: Chapter 2 takes place in a modern day family but revolves around Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and his son, Dalton (Ty Simpkons).  Dalton inherited a unique ability from his father that allows him to travel to another place, somewhere the living never should go.  Spirits of the dead roam this sort of limbo, trying to steal someone’s body from them.

In the first movie, Insidious, Josh has to go there to save his son Dalton from losing himself to a murderous dark spirit.  Now in Chapter 2, the movie takes place right after the first film, making the title a good fit.  Josh takes his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) and his two sons to his mother’s house.  There Dalton connects two tin cans with a string and uses it to talk to his brother, Foster (Andrew Astor), but the string also has another purpose; it’s used by the spirits to talk to Dalton.  Now, the family has to once again keep Dalton safe from the spirits of the underworld.

This movie did not rely on ghosts to pop out and scare the audience, the movie consistently used more subtle ways to give the audience goose bumps.  Rose Byrne did a phenomenal job throughout the movie with her acting oblivious to things that the audience can clearly see like a shadow lurking in the corner, stalking, waiting.

Fortunately, you do not need to see the first movie to enjoy the second.  The second film is written clearly and is easy to follow, but it also relates back and makes a lot of connections to the first movie.

Personally, I felt that the second film had a much better story line than the first, but wasn’t as scary.  The first movie did a great job with scaring the audience and keeping them on edge, but I felt that Insidious: Chapter 2 didn’t live up to the first film in that regard.  Other than that I was overjoyed with the movie.