James Wan and Leigh Whannell's bonkers supernatural horror Insidious was one of 2011's most profitable films, with final box office nearly a hundred times its meagre budget. It saw Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson battling forces from dungeon dimension 'The Further' - including a woman in a black wedding dress and a crimson puppet master with a peculiar fondness for Tiny Tim records - and without wishing to offend the spoiler cry-babies, its ending certainly left scope for more.
Naturally, the money meant there was immediately talk of a sequel, but all involved insisted they wouldn't do it unless they had a really good idea. And inspiration clearly struck, because here we are with the first full trailer for Insidious: Chapter 2.
Patrick Wilson informs us the family is now living at Grandma's house, where "nothing's going to bother us". Let's see how that works out. We already know it wasn't the house that was haunted... it was Dalton! And look, told you so, there's a creepy woman in a white dress, and the suggestion that 'Row Your Boat' might be this film's 'Tiptoe Through The Tulips'.
We've also got a seance where letter cubes arrange themselves into the Latin phrase "mater mortalis" ("mother dead"?); Wilson pulling his teeth out; a collection of corpses; faces at windows; rocking horses... rocking; much in the way of screaming and pointing, accompanied by the repeated phrase, "He's got your baby!"; and the suggestion that 'Tiptoe Through The Tulips' may be this film's 'Tiptoe Through The Tulips' after all.
What we don't get, however, is a sense that this may not be quite the ghost story that its predecessor was. Empire had cause to speak to James Wan recently, and while he was giving nothing away, he did clue us in to the idea that "in a lot of ways, Insidious: Chapter 2 is a slightly different horror subgenre to Insidious".
"It picks up right at the end of the first film," Wan explains, "but where the first one is a twist on the haunted house genre, this one is kind of a twist on the domestic thriller. It's more like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, or** Pacific Heights**, or The Stepfather. It's sort of what they used to call a 'from Hell' movie, where you had the babysitter from Hell or the tenant from Hell. This is the loved one from Hell. We're not sure about a particular character who has 'returned' from the other dimension and may have brought something back..."
Insidious: Chapter 2 once again stars Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey and Lin Shaye alongside Wilson, who Wan has now worked with three times in a row: on Insidious, this, and Wan's other supernatural horror of the summer, The Conjuring. "Patrick's an awesome guy," Wan told us. "We really get along and he's a terrific actor. He always brings so much to his character that he makes my job very easy!"
Insidious: Chapter 2 is out in the UK on September 13. Steel yourselves for The Conjuring a month earlier on August 2. You can check out the trailer for that one right here.