Culver City Observer -

INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 & HELL BABY

by

debbie lynn elias

Welcome to Friday the 13th! Always a fun day for the superstitious and horror movies, leave it to writer/director James Wan along with co-writer Leigh Whannell, and co-directors/writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, to satisfy our cravings with two of my faves of the year, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 and HELL BABY, respectively. While both are terrifying, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 takes possession of us with terror, fear and scares, as opposed to HELL BABY which terrorizes us with Satan’s spawn and laughter. This is the perfect double feature bill this weekend!

INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2

When we last saw the Lambert family, courtesy of their creators director James Wan and his co-writer Leigh Whannell, they had cleaned up at the box office, established themselves as THE number one family plagued by the horrors of the supernatural and left us begging for more. After all, once you have a connection to “The Further”, it’s not likely you’ll lose it; especially with a rabid public to appease. Picking up where “Insidious” left off, Josh Lambert has brought his son Dalton back from “The Further.” His family is now safe (allegedly), he has come to terms with his spirit world connection and the not-so-nice connections he seems to make, and he together with wife Renai and their three kids have moved back in to the creepiest house on the block with his mother, Lorraine. But all is not quiet in the extended Lambert family home as things immediately start to go bump in the night, er, play music, Dalton sees ghouls and skeletons and frightening things that more appropriately belong in “The Further” and Josh, well, Josh looks and acts like he’s losing his mind. Just exactly what did he bring back from “The Further” with Dalton. And so the terror begins.

Once again calling on the services of psychic Elise (herself now a supernatural resident thanks to some untoward activities from “The Further”), Renai and Lorraine are determined to find out once again what’s happening. Is the house itself haunted or is it being haunted? With flashbacks at the ready, we go back in time with the Lamberts to when Josh was a little boy and first encountered “The Further.” Thanks to Elise and her assistant Carl, his visions and “powers” were bound back then and he was made to forget, until Dalton’s untimely capture. With Elise now gone and in desperate need of answers, they have only one link to the spirit world - Carl. Joining Carl are Elise’s present-day right-hand ghost hunters, Specs and Tucker.

With the real life world and the plane of existence of “The Further intertwining and history and murder playing into the hand, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 takes us where no man wants to go - back into “The Further” to see what really happened when Josh went in to save Dalton.

Although not as jump-out-of-your-skin as “Insidious”, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 has the added touch of an inherent humor that comes with Patrick Wilson's performance as Josh Lambert. Wilson not only nails the duality of Josh’s now persona, but he then denigrates more into demonic evil as the film progresses. And going hand in hand with his performance is the outstanding make-up job as we see his facial features become more "ghoulish" as he becomes more raked with evil..... Very very cool and Wilson just relishes every look, every nuance, every scare.

What is not to love about Barbara Hershey? Returning as Lorraine, this go-round the most apt description for her performance is kick-ass. Between she and Helen Mirren, they are proof that AARP-ers are far from over-the-hill! Hershey brings a maternal intensity and strength that rivals that of a lion protecting her cubs. Adding fuel to Hershey’s performance is Whannell’s script which grounds the character as being intelligently written with a calm, inquisitive, pragmatic thought process.

Rose Byrne delivers another comfortable performance as beleaguered wife and mother, Renai, while Ty Simpkins steps up his performance another notch as young Dalton.

The real character and performance joys, however, come from Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson as ghost-hunters, Specs and Tucker, not to mention another superb performance by

Lin Shaye as Elise. Whannell's performance as Specs is again, entertaining and fun, infusing adventure with a scaredy cat edge and together with Sampson delivers some real laugh-out-loud funny comic relief. And I can never get enough of Lin Shaye. No matter what she does, she always brings believability to the role and reprising her role as Elise is no different. But applause, applause to director Wan with his casting of the younger Elise. Lindsay Seim is a dead ringer for a young Shaye, which leads me to note and commend Wan for dubbing the voices of the older actors - Shaye and Hershey - over their younger counterparts. Very nice touch and adds to the continuity. Not to be overlooked is Steve Coulter who adds a serious and touching note as Carl.

Intelligent writing is one of my favorite aspects of INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2. The historical haunting methodology and simple dice as a means of contact with the dead - nothing is gratuitous. Characters are fully fleshed out - even the dead ones - with each serving a specific purpose and concurrently being integral to the story as a whole. The twists and turns that Wan and Whannell take are surprising and refreshingly twisted so that for many of the twists, you don't see them coming. Nice wrap around with the first installment and the character of Josh as a child and as an adult. However, having said that, given my love of scares and true fright in films, I would have liked to see some more hair raising frights and moments of true terror. INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 is taken down a notch from the original, to the film’s detriment. Ti West fell into this same trap with “The Innkeepers” as the frights were toned down exponentially from “House of the Devil.” Keep it scary boys!!!

Call me crazy but a real standout for me with INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 is that we finally have a horror/thriller where people actually turn the damn lights on when they hear things go bump in the night and before they go exploring into dark rooms! Finally, something that makes sense that each of us would do at home when we hear noises!

Jennifer Spence’s production design is exemplary. Returning to the same house, Lorraine's, with same décor and furnishings keeps the flow of the story going. Makes one feel as if they are part of the Lambert lives and not just a spectator. We know the living room and the kitchen. Dark woods and often umber toned lighting within the house, particularly at night, is not off-putting or frightening, but just the opposite - warm and inviting. The standout design, however, are Elise's Reading Room which is actually quite beautiful with the vintage lighting, furnishings and steeped in deep crimsons, burgundies and reds - reds are not "bright" but warm and aged. Also wonderful is the design of the vacant hospital and the Crane house - especially the beautiful light, bright, pink girly bedroom in flashback. The visual contrast of design in this film adds so much texture to the tapestried tale.

Complimenting the production design is the cinematographic tonal bandwidth from varied lighting to individual shot framing. John Leonetti and Wan draw your eye to specific focus thanks to judicious use of doorways, stairwells, BUT, then they step out of the box and while you're eye is trained on one focal point, toss in something in the fringes of almost negative space that captures your peripheral vision for just a moment - but that moment plants a seed that comes into main focus later in the film.

INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 is an insidious delight. Bring on Chapter 3!

HELL BABY

From the wickedly irreverent, fertile imaginations of those guys who brought us “Reno 911!", Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, comes HELL BABY, a riff on the demonic possession films that have delighted audiences for generations. Vanessa and Jack are expecting their first child and, of course, want he/she to have a nice house to grow up in, a nice neighborhood, a nice yard. So, what do you do with a wife who’s eight months pregnant and ready to pop at any moment? You buy an antebellum dilapidated mansion in hurricane ravaged New Orleans, a house that needs to be razed rather than renovated, a house that is often referred to by the locals as the “House of Blood” and, oh yea, has a squatter named F’resnel who pops up at the most inopportune moments scaring the bejeebers out of you.

As if pregnancy isn’t enough of a horror, imagine what happens when Vanessa starts speaking in deep staccato like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” and acting beyond weird. (I was waiting for her head to start spinning.) Of course, Jack just attributes everything to pregnancy hormones. F’resnel on the hand is certain she’s possessed by something in the house.

Meanwhile, at the Vatican, word has come of the impending birth of Satan’s spawn. And guess who the mother is? Knowing this cannot be allowed to happen, Cardinal Vicente sends his best exorcists, Father Sebastian and Father Padrigo, to New Orleans to resolve the situation.

As forces, friends and foes collide for the inevitable birth, blood spews forth, dead bodies turn up and comedy ensues in every shape possible.

No one can feign horror and shock like Rob Corddry while maintaining a perfect edge of believable sympathy. As Jack, Corddry gets to do something rarely has the opportunity to do - be the straight guy. You adore him, you feel for him. Corddry really evokes sympathy and empathy and makes bumbling stumbling belief in his wife adorable. As Vanessa, Leslie Bibb knocks it out of the park with hilarity as the modern day comedic version of “Rosemary” of “Rosemary’s Baby” fame, giving birth to her Satanic spawn.

But as good as Corddry and Bibb are both individually and on-screen together (great chemistry), look no further than Keegan Michael Key who steals every scene. Reminding me almost of an old 1930's “don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes” with a man in black-face sketch, as F’Resnel, Key screams laughter. His sneaky surprise appearances have you wondering is he the one haunting Jack and Vanessa’s house or is he secretly practicing his own brand of voodoo. Whatever he’s doing, it works! And Key serves a very important function for the audience as while F’Resnel provides exposition of history and urban myth to Jack and Vanessa, he is also providing the audience with the backstory and necessary elements to fill in any gaps. Wonderful construct by w/d Lennon and Garant.

As exorcists sent direct from the Vatican, Lennon and Garant themselves don the cloth and cloaks...but with a few comedic additions - chain smoking cigarettes, Ray Ban aviators, sloppy face-stuffing goring of shrimp po-boys covering their faces in catsup with the food arrangements mimicking the trail of entrails and blood splatter from grisly bloody murders - and all done deadpan. And I mean deadpan. Just looking at them and you laugh. They are the comedy version of “The Boondock Saints” MacManus Brothers aka Norm Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery filled with piss, vinegar and whoop-ass, just with sanction of the Vatican.

Written and directed in the patented slapstick style of Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, the duo opt for the simplicity of shock, awe and surprise as opposed to horror franchise terror. Parodying standard horror tropes, Lennon and Garant create a well paced and consistent comedy filled with side-splitting laughs that barely give you time to catch your breath from laughing so hard. And this laughter isn’t just a snicker or chuckle - it’s uproarious.

Where Lennon and Garant really soar are by creating the funniest moments from everyday events and occurrences - and none is more frustrating or funny than dealing with the cable man. Even in a haunted New Orleans mansion possessed by Satan, one needs their cable. And what’s not to laugh at when Kumail Nanjiani shows up at the door as the installer and is swept into the insanity of the situation with a cleansing exorcism that involves some very very very powerful pot. Too high to stand let alone drive, he insists on driving his cable truck home or back to the shop which makes for one of the funniest scenes to come along in movies in many a day.

Where the duo fall a bit short, however, is with overkill in extending comedic antics beyond the laughter, i.e., cable guy trying to drive, sloppy eating of po-boys. And just how many burps and farts do we need in a film? One gag that doesn’t get old though is Corddry’s Jack trying to repair a floor lamp. It’s “shockingly” funny.

I am in love with the location and the mansion used for the filming. Cleverly stripped bare on the interior but for the bare bones skeleton of the structure and an outside that looks like Tara 200 years later after Sherman burned it to the ground with the fire char still covering the plaster but with the added decor of graffiti and cobwebs. Thrilled they shot in New Orleans and had it be New Orleans. Adds an entirely different vibe of authenticity to the film.

Interesting is the crew that Lennon and Garant have assembled starting with cinematographer Charles Papert. With a background steeped in diversity, Papert brings the wonderful sensibilities as a cameraman/steadicam operator with the likes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Act of Valor”, “Scrubs”, among others, that give him an eye for lighting and lensing with creativity in small or constricting spaces and capturing specific emotion of each scene but giving it a cohesive polish.

Providing the final touch of tonal perfection is Michael Farrell’s score which is fun, mirroring the tone of the film.

A laugh a minute. Devilishly delicious. Just say “Hell, Yes” to HELL BABY.