Is Insidious: Chapter 2 Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 5 out of 10. It's a haunted house sequel built on creepy figures that appear behind people.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
5 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Medium
The feeling fades after about a night, though a dark hallway might get a second look.
DOG
Dog: fine
there's no dog in this one.
Ruling: It has plenty of jump scares and a woman in a wedding gown, so watch it with the lights on.
Insidious: Chapter 2 runs 106 minutes and picks up with the Lambert family after the first movie. They move into Lorraine's house to get away from the haunting, which is a thoughtful plan for a family whose haunting follows them.
The premise, briefly
After a demonologist's death, the Lambert family moves into Lorraine's house, where the haunting continues and Josh starts to behave strangely.
How much do you want to know?
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The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Elise destroys the spirit of Michelle, the mother of Parker Crane, which stops the possessed Josh from killing his family. Josh and Dalton get their memories suppressed again. In the last scene Elise's spirit finds a new family and an unseen figure behind a girl in a coma.
The scene you're dreading
The possessed Josh attacks his family late in the movie. He locks Lorraine in a closet and goes after Renai, Dalton and Foster, who run to the basement. Elise stops him from inside The Further.
The dog
There is no dog in Insidious: Chapter 2, so no dog dies.
Insidious: Chapter 2 is a jump-scare ghost story with a serial killer backstory, and the scariest parts are the figures standing where you were not looking.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Elise gets a new job in the afterlife
In 1986 Lorraine Lambert brings in a demonologist, Elise Rainier, for her son Josh, whom a ghostly old woman wearing a black wedding dress keeps haunting. While they search for the cause, an unseen force slashes Elise's arm. Elise decides that Josh's ability to travel in astral form is dangerous and that the family should suppress it and plant altered memories in his head. Twenty-four years later, Josh's wife Renai is being questioned by a detective about Elise's death. Renai, Josh and their children Dalton, Foster and Kali move into Lorraine's house, and the haunting comes with them. Dalton keeps dreaming of a woman in white and hears his father talking to someone no one can see. Josh then hears a voice telling him to kill his family.
Specs and Tucker, who used to work with Elise, show Lorraine a tape of the 1986 investigation. In the cleaned-up footage, a grown Josh is standing behind the boy version of himself. They call Elise's former colleague Carl, who tries to reach Elise's spirit and is told to look for answers at the empty hospital, which is where Lorraine once worked as a physician. Lorraine remembers a patient named Parker Crane, who assaulted young Josh and then supposedly jumped to his death, although she saw him out of bed days later. The group goes to the Crane house, where the spirit of Parker's mother Michelle attacks Lorraine and names herself Mother Mortis. Carl had actually reached her earlier and assumed it was Elise. A hidden room holds a black gown, newspaper clippings and many corpses, and the group learns that Parker was the serial killer called the Bride in Black, who killed fifteen women while dressed as one at his mother's spirit's urging.
The family in the basement, Dalton in the afterlife
The scene to brace for comes late in the movie. Renai and Lorraine realize that Josh is possessed, since his body is slowly deteriorating. Carl, Specs and Tucker come to sedate him, but he overpowers all three. The possessed Josh locks Lorraine in a closet and goes after Renai, Dalton and Foster, who run to the basement. Meanwhile Carl wakes up in The Further, where he runs into the real Josh and the spirit of Elise. Time works strangely there, so Josh can talk to his younger self and learn where Parker's house is. Dalton goes into The Further on purpose to help, and they all watch Michelle abuse Parker and make him behave like a girl. Elise then appears and destroys Michelle's spirit, which stops the possessed Josh in the real world.
The ending, explained
Dalton guides Josh and Carl back to the world of the living, and Josh finally regains control of his body. Afterward Carl suppresses the memories of Josh and Dalton once more. Some time later, Specs and Tucker visit a household where a girl named Allison is lying in an unexplained coma. Elise's spirit, which only Allison's younger sister can see, walks past them into Allison's room and finds an unseen figure behind the girl as a creaking sound is heard. The movie ends on Elise gasping and saying "Oh my god."
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed either way whether Insidious: Chapter 2 has a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: there's no dog in this one.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Insidious: Chapter 2 scary?
Yes. Insidious: Chapter 2 scores 5 out of 10, with medium dread that fades after about a night. The fear comes from jump scares and ghosts that appear behind people.
How does Insidious: Chapter 2 end?
Elise destroys Michelle's spirit, which frees Josh from the possession, and Carl suppresses Josh and Dalton's memories again. In the final scene Elise's spirit finds an unseen figure behind a comatose girl and gasps.
Does the dog die in Insidious: Chapter 2?
No, because there is no dog in Insidious: Chapter 2. No other animals die either.
Is there a post-credits scene in Insidious: Chapter 2?
Nobody has confirmed whether Insidious: Chapter 2 has a scene after the credits.
Who is the Bride in Black in Insidious: Chapter 2?
The Bride in Black is Parker Crane, a former patient of Lorraine's who assaulted young Josh and turned out to be a serial killer. He killed fifteen women while dressed as a woman, at the urging of his mother Michelle's spirit.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Insidious: Chapter 2 is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
That is how Insidious: Chapter 2 plays out, and you never had to sit in the dark with it. Install Scaredy Cat and the internet's horror gets blurred before you see it.
