Insidious Movie Review
Insidious Movie Review
Directed by James Wan. Starring Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannel, and Lin Shaye.
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Sounds like a horror fan’s wet dream team: the creators of Saw (director James Wan and writer/actor Leigh Whannel) and Paranormal Activity (producers Oren Peli, Jason Blum and Steven Schneider) come together to make a scary movie. Too good to be true...? If you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, you could be waiting for quite awhile – Insidious lives up to its pedigree, and then some. I actually liked it better than Saw, Paranormal Activity, and all their sequels combined.
Quite obviously a love letter to Wan’s favorite movie, Poltergeist, the spooky story follows a young married couple and their children into a new home… and into the pit of darkness when an evil presence makes its insidious intentions known. Renais (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Patrick Wilson) are still unpacking boxes when one of their three young children falls prey to “the man with fire in his face” – a horrible specter who stands at the center of a whirlpool of ghosts, ghouls, and goblins.
The family pulls up stakes and gets the (PG-13) heck out of Dodge, but of course the spirit isn’t tied to bricks and mortar – it’s in the flesh and blood. What to do when you’ve got a ghost in your DNA? First, call in Mom (Barbara Hershey, who was once herself in a super early 80s supernatural thriller called The Entity), then the ghost-busters (played by Whannel, and Angus Sampson from the new TV series, Spirited), and finally, the big-gun medium in the petite form of Lin Shaye (known by horror-hounds for her roles in every Tim Sullivan film ever made – including home videos).
Showing us nearly everything via corporeal body – think: The Shining, with the bathtub lady and the twins – Wan succeeds in both homage and an original (if traditional) telling. What’s more, Insidious is one of the most effective PG-13 white-knucklers since The Ring and The Others.
There’s plenty of stock scares – doors opening and closing on their own, glimpses of intruders, goofy music used subversively (in this case, it’s Tiny Tim’s Tiptoe Through the Tulips), children awakening screaming from nightmares, and so on – but Wan knows how to draw out the suspense that exploit each moment to its utmost. An excellent, effective score by Joseph Bishara and sublime, 70s style cinematography by two DPs (David Brewer and John Leonetti) help tie the whole thing up in a blood-soaked bow. Whannel’s script doesn’t forget the wry humor hallmarks of 80s horror, nor the boo-scares, but at the same time, the movie is actually scary. Sinister, but never mean or bleak.
Insidious fits into the dark fantasy category as well, bringing to mind classics like Something Wicked This Way Comes, and It (the only things that really separate Insidious from those two, and Poltergeist, is that there is very, very little child-POV or/and identifying with the kids' characters).
While I must say I found Shaye and Sampson’s performances a bit shaky at times, the cast was top notch – especially Wilson (no relation, I swear!) as the dad who is just trying to do the right things and winds up putting his family’s lives in the ultimate danger (think: The Amityville Horror… another film blown a kiss). The film goes a bit off the rails towards the end (seems to be a Wan weakness – Saw, Dead Silence, and Death Sentence all went just beyond the pale, when they really didn’t need to),but fortunately gets back on track with a terrific carnival of souls finale even I didn’t see coming.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
Latest User Comments:
| Astral Projection in Insidious | |
| Insidious is popular because the movie conveys astral projection. Rose Byrne is a beauty. Great movie review. Hope to see Insidious 2. :eek: [URL="http://www.astralwriter.com"]AstralWriter.com[/URL] | |
| 11-13-2011 by AstralWriter | discuss |