Just read this great article after a set visit on this flick and I honestly can't wait. It's filmed in present day, the past, and in The Further. They go on to say the story is weaved and presented like The Godfather Part 2.
Almost the entire flick is filmed inside Linda Vista Hospital in L.A. They actually recreated rooms of the original house inside the hospital because for some reason they didn't have access to the house except for outside shots (assumed people live there).
I loved Insidious and think this may be a great sequel/continuation. In this article though Wan goes on to say this will most likely be his last horror film because he feels as though he is being type-cast
So here’s what we know: INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2 spends a lot of time in this hospital and as it turns out, a good chunk of that time is set in the 1980’s as a parallel story with the younger versions of the characters, not too dissimilar from structure of THE GODFATHER 2. This parallel story deals with Patrick Wilson’s character as a boy with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVILS Jocelin Donahue as his mother and Barbara Hershey’s younger counterpart (is that not BRILLIANT casting?). A younger version of Lin Shaye’s Elise Rainer also plays a part in this parallel tale, and that’s not necessarily just a round about way to get her character back after her apparent demise at the end of the first film. No, Lin is alive and (perhaps not entirely) well.
Not exactly spoilers but it does go into some plot detail. To be safe I wrapped it up.
Spoiler...
“It’s hard to go into what’s different about it without ruining anything, but it’s a real continuation of the first film, this film picks up directly from where the last film left off. It feels more like the second half of the first film, which is why we are calling it Chapter 2.” Leigh, continuing his role as actor/writer/producer, explained. What we do know is that the Lambert family is as much the center of the story as the first one, but what’s literally changing is the genre, as Barbara puts it “It’s a bit of a murder mystery, which is a wonderful addition to their story.”
A murder mystery that apparently spans decades and dimensions, as Leigh puts it “one of the interesting things about the first film is the reaction from people. The first half of the film sets up a fairly traditional haunted house film and then it starts to go further with these more outlandish concepts. James and I noticed that it was kind of polarizing… People would say ‘The film was great… up until, etc.’. We always said that was what we wanted to do. We knew we couldn’t make the first half of the film for the whole movie, we knew it’d have to descend into chaos. What’s interesting about the sequel is that now all that crazy stuff is established. From the very start we’re going to continue in the further world.”