Insidious Chapter 2: trailer analysis

Insidious: Chapter 2 is an upcoming American horror film directed by James Wan. It is a sequel to 2011's Insidious. The plot of the film is as follows, The Lambert family are happily reunited after Josh went into the Further to get his son Dalton back. However, the paranormal events continue to occur, which become more and more terrifying. When the family begins to notice strange behaviour from the father, they start to wonder; is it really Josh that came back from the Further?

The Insidious chapter 2 trailer does not goes in a chronological story telling manner and instead opts to show very particular scenes where there is a lot of tension. The trailer runs for 2:24 and within that time shows 92 different cuts and clips. At first this seems like a lot for a horror trailer that typically opt for just building tension and fear in the audience so you would expect this number to be lower. However the Insidious chapter 2 trailer try's to incorporate a few jump scares within the trailer itself as well as incorporating some quick jump to create an uneasy unpredictable feel to the trailer.

The sound used in this trailer starts off in a pretty uncommon fashion with happy upbeat music taking centre stage accompanied with the sound and imagery of happy children laughing and playing with their parents as well as several shots of the family being together and saying goodnight to each other. Their is also use of dialect "we are a family again" but again it all appears pretty regular and their is no hint at the genre of this film being a horror yet. The large majority of shots from this segment are group shots showing the family being together apart from the odd close up of each child as they go to bed and another close up of the mother smiling at the start

It is not until 30 seconds in that the trailer take a darker turn. The happy music fades out and you are left with a disturbing scene of a darker room with child's walking toy moving into shot by itself  with the sounds of the toy being the only source of sound. This creates an extremely eery feeling. This tune from the toy continues to be the only source of sound for the trailer for a further 20 seconds whilst the mother looks round the house only to find an unknown women who suddenly vanishes. The camera shots from this segment are mid shots of the mother with the camera tracking her as she moves throughout the house as well as a high angle long shot of her as she enters the room where he second woman appear closely followed by a close up of her reaction and the fear in her face.

It is when the woman vanishes around 1 minuet in when the trailer pick up tempo and the talking from scenes returns and now scarier darker music shortly comes as well. All the sound get progressively louder and the shots get progressively shorter for around another 30 seconds until there comes a scene where one of the children say "Is there something wrong with daddy mom?". It is at this point where the music stops again and the trailer has a fade which creates a atmosphere of tension and unease among the audience.

From this point the sounds used in this trailer are short lines form the actors accompanied by a strange

warping sound getting louder and quieter with clashes arriving at random points this makes a very disturbing and again uneasy atmosphere and makes the audience feel uncomfortable just watching it. This segment of the trailer is paired with some of the more disturbing images of the trailer with a large use of fast paced cuts in between as well as lots of camera movement such as tilts and zooms to keep the audience engaged. 

From here the screen fades to black the title appears and the trailer goes out to some more happy sounding music but this time it feel a lot more creepy now that the genre has been fully established.