'Insidious: Chapter 2'

Released only weeks ago, Insidious 2 has become such a grossly talked about film, with such mixed reviews, it seemed almost criminal not to go and see the sequel of one of the few horror films that actually had me shaking. And generally, I was disappointed.
The story itself picks up just 12 hours after the finale of it's prequel, with the tired and traumatised housewife Renai sat in a police holding cell, trying to explain the unexplainable feats of the nights before, and how there came to be a stone cold dead woman sat in the middle of her living room floor. The family, not living with Josh's mother, spend the first third of the film trying to return to normal before discovering that normality is an unattainable concept, especially with the very same demon returning for their families, in a head-shakingly predictable new vessel.
Overall, the story line is good. The ghoulish villains have an intriguing back story,  the jump scares were rolling in by the plenty, there was a not-quite-shocking-but-still-quite-surprising twist thrown in halfway through, and from beginning to middle, I was interested. Yet, from middle to end, I simply lost focus. The story from that point on became too scattered, too predictable and too plagiarised, it felt like any old horror film; falling chandeliers, spooky, dusty houses, slamming doors and lazy writing. The conclusion to the story was unpleasantly poor as well, seemingly summing up years of trauma in a few short scenes, none of which were performed to any great acting standard, I might add.
The cast itself is reasonably resonant, with the same characters, plus one, resuming pretty much the same roles as in the previous film. Worried wife Renai (Rose Byrne), frustrated father Josh (Patrick Wilson), kindly spiritualist, nerdy ghost busters and children who kick ghostly-butt and whisper creepy warnings through their baby monitors. The new addition to the cast, Carl, played by 'The Hunger Games' Steve Coulter, takes the form of an old friend of the recently deceased Elise, effectively takes the place of resident spiritual contactor, yet actually has a very two dimensional personality in contrast to some of the other characters; far too many of whom had so much screen time, yet spent so little of it actually acting. Another character whose time on screen should've been increased ever so slightly would've been the ghostly demon itself, who, whilst having it's marginally disturbing private and personal life explained away, doesn't really do that much ghostly murdering. Yes, the grim looking 'mother of death' does make a couple of chairs flap about, and whilst she does strum out some terrible piano chords once in a while, she does a surprisingly small amount of damage in the 'real world', and serves only a marginally larger purpose in the 'spirit world'.
One of the complaints I had of the last film was, to be blunt, the flinch-worthy and horribly hammy special effects concluding the second half, yet these appeared to have kept to a minimum in 'Chapter 2', for which I was incredibly grateful. The actual 'scary' moments of the film... well, yes, they were scary, but it was a rather short-fused fear, and were slightly disjointed in comparison to the rest of the film, in all it's dry stretch. I also found that, in comparison to the drawn-out tension of the previous film, the directors decided to drop in some lighter moments of comic relief, typically in the characters of Specs and Tucker; yet these moments were so awkwardly punctuated, stuck in between scenes which might've been scary, or emotional, it just felt unpolished and badly edited. If you're looking for a film to make you jump out of your seat, a real white-knuckle horror...this is really not going to be that film.