Jenna Ortega has become a big star in recent years, primarily thanks to her turn on the mega-hit Netflix series "Wednesday," which recently dropped the first part of its second season (you can read our review of that season right here).
One interesting thing about the sudden rise of new stars is going back and noticing them pop up in earlier films before they made it big. Case in point: did you know Jenna Ortega shows up in "Insidious: Chapter 2"? If you didn't, that's okay — her part is very small.
In fact, she only shows up in the very last scene and has very little dialogue.
Ortega's brief moment seems to be setting up a storyline for a sequel, but she did not end up returning for the next film, "Insidious: Chapter 3," which went in a different direction. Nor did she show up in any of the other "Insidious" films that followed. Still, if you're a fan of Jenna Ortega, it might be fun to revisit the film and see a very young version of the actress get one line of dialogue. Then again, "Insidious: Chapter 2" is kind of lousy, so maybe you shouldn't revisit it after all.
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What Happens In Insidious And Insidious: Chapter 2?
James Wan and Leigh Whannell's "Insidious" (which has one of the all-time great jumpscares) is a fun haunted house flick that feels heavily indebted to "Poltergeist" while also offering some twists on the established ghost movie formula. In "Insidious," the Lambert family finds themselves tormented when one of their sons slips into what seems to be a coma for no discernible reason. As it turns out, his spirit has wandered from his body into a ghoulish netherworld called The Further, and this has resulted in all sorts of ghosts and demons haunting the Lamberts.
In the first film, the family calls in a team of ghost hunters: the psychic Elise (Lin Shaye) and her two comic-relief sidekicks Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson). Elise is able to help the family, but the film ends with a wicked twist: Lambert patriarch Josh (Patrick Wilson) gets possessed by the ghost of an old woman and strangles Elise to death! The series probably could've ended there, but "Insidious" was a big hit and spawned an entire franchise, starting with "Insidious: Chapter 2."
Unfortunately, "Chapter 2" is a bit of a misfire, even though it involves seemingly everyone involved with the first movie. For baffling reasons, Wan and Whannell decided to over-explain all the mysterious stuff that happened in the first movie — a decision that robs the original of lots of its power (one lame example: we learn the scary ghost woman from the first movie is actually a cross-dressing male serial killer). Thankfully, "Insidious: Chapter 3," which saw Whannell take a seat in the director's chair, is an improvement.
Jenna Ortega's Role In Insidious: Chapter 2
As for Jenna Ortega, she plays Annie, a little girl who pops up at the end of "Chapter 2." Even though the first film killed Elise off, the character returns in the sequel in ghost form (and in flashbacks to when she was still alive). The final scene of "Chapter 2" shows that, despite the inconvenience of her death, Elise is still working with Specs and Tucker to investigate the paranormal.
In the film's final moments, Specs and Tucker arrive at the home of a family and tell them they've been in contact with their teenage daughter, Allison. This causes some confusion, because Allison is in a coma. Then, Annie, Allison's younger sister played by Ortega, asks a question: who is the lady standing on the porch with Specs and Tucker? Annie's parents don't see the lady, but Annie does (and so do we) — it's Elise's ghost.
This indicates Annie has a gift to see the dead, which you might think will carry over into the next movie, with Annie and her family playing a part. But that doesn't happen. Instead, "Chapter 3" focuses on completely different characters, and Jenna Ortega never returned to the franchise. Don't worry, though: her career is obviously going well now.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
