Insidious - Review

A lower-budget and gore-free horror film produced by the director of Paranormal Activity and directed by the director of the original Saw... yeah, that sounds promising. Although, the hype around Insidious was fairly lackluster and its Haunted House concept had been done many times before (Poltergeist The Amityville Horror, or Paranormal Activity for instance), so this was one of those movies that could have gone either way. Now, after finally seeing it, I am happy to report that Insidious definitely lived up to its promise!

As I mentioned before, Insidious starts out as your basic haunted house story. A family movies into a creepy new house and begins to experience a series of ghastly hauntings. The family, known as the Lamberts, consists of the married couple Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) along with their three kids, Dalton, Foster, and the newborn Calli. Shortly after the move, the young Dalton is exploring their new home and takes a bad fall. At first, his injuries don't seem particularly severe, but the next day, he finds himself in a coma. Despite not having any major head trauma, Dalton is unable to wake up, and shortly after the incident, the hauntings begin...

Alright, I'm convinced... director James Wan is destined to be one of the great directors of the horror genre. I expect him to eventually be held in the same light as George Romero, Wes Craven, John Carpenter and others. First, he made popular the torture porn sub-genre when he revealed the iconic Saw to the world, followed that with Dead Silence (which I still need to see, but people tell me its good), and now proves himself again with Insidious. The guy is clearly a skilled director, with a knack for creating suspenseful and disturbing scenes.

The shots are framed brilliantly, with cinematography that really encompasses the eerie and sometimes freaky images. While I didn't loose any sleep over this movie, I will admit that some moments did stick with me for a while... and I might have needed to have the TV on around my apartment for some ambient noise. The jump moments in Insidious were plentiful, and the way Wan built tension through the atmosphere and music was near-perfect... even if the constant violin screeches did get a little grating at times. There were times they would set up a long, atmospheric, and intense segment with a well-executed jump as payoff that made everyone in the audience collectively scream. There were other times where something would pop out at random without any warning or setups... and those really caught me off guard. Most of the images depicted appropriately creepy and disturbing, so you might have a bit of a time getting them out of your head for a while. There's no doubt that Insidious is scary... and it rarely lets up.

One thing that always brings a smile to my face is to see a horror film with good acting. While it really should be standard, lets be honest here, horror films don't exactly score high in the acting departments. Insidious proves to be one of the exceptions with a variety of actors who really sell their roles. While their characters may not be particularly three-dimensional (more on that later), the actors who play them are usually believable and consistent. Rose Byrne pulls off the loving mother figure while Patrick Wilson (Night Owl from Watchmen) embodies the skeptic father figure equally well. Black Swan's Barbara Hershey comes in halfway through to give a solid performance as Josh's supportive mother, Lorraine. Though, the one who appears to be having the most fun was Lin Shaye as a psychic named Elise who is called to help remedy the situation. Overall, the cast was surprisingly quite good, and ultimately gave the movie a good edge.

Insidious is one of those movies that does so many things right, that I would prefer to simply ignore its faults... but for obvious reasons, I can't do that. The movie's weakest link is definitely the script. As I mentioned before, this is not a particularly original or innovative movie. It owes a lot of its inspiration to previous films including Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, and Paranormal Activity. The character's aren't anything new or original either. You have the desperate mom, the douchebag dad, and the psychic kid... cliche characterizations that we've seen countless times. There is no real depth to any of the characters aside from for generic horror cliches.

The first two-thirds of the movie are quite good... near perfect even. By the time the third act roles around, its a little more hit-and-miss. For starters, the first two thirds of Insidious seemed to set up a number of plot devices and secondary characters that get pushed aside or totally ignored by the final third. Plus, the ending gets pretty over-the-top and sometimes silly. One of the main evil spirits that was repeatedly popping up was a demon that looked like Darth Maul. There was also an evil old lady who was played by a male actor. Also, toward the end, two characters are introduced named Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson). They're a pair of pseudo-Ghostbusters who accompany Elise and serve as the comic relief. I'll admit they had some funny moments and the added humor was welcome, but introducing such goofy characters that late in the game felt kind of off-beat. I will say, aside from the disturbing closing shot, the climax does do away with a lot of the subtle and creepy vibe... but it is entertaining nonetheless.

Most of my complaints about Insidious are nitpicks. No, it's not perfect, but dammit I enjoyed the hell out of this movie! It delivers just about everything you could want out of a solid scary movie! One more thing, for those who want a horror film but don't like blood, this is the one you've been waiting for. Totally free of blood and gore, but heavy on the scares! Check this one out... highly recommended!

I give it a 4 out of 5!