James Wan mined the “Horror Movie Guide to Creepy Characters” (not a real thing) and came up with Insidious, a film that’s, more or less, an homage to PG-13 horror with a tinge of the classical thrown in. Everything from little kids, grandmas, demons and ghostly twin girls are combined with a sneak attack score to offer up scares. Toss in the frozen faced smile of some afterlife, gun-toting creepies and you have a party.
Interestingly enough, while the scares are cheap and nothing feels new, this at-once horror/parody is equally freaky and funny, though never too much on either end of the spectrum. It’s more of a fun house ride than anything else as Wan and his sound editors time the crashing score to hit a split second after something creepy shows up on screen. So while you’re trying to comprehend the fire-faced, Darth Maul-looking demon standing behind Patrick Wilson you’re auditory senses are attacked by a teeth-clenching blast from the orchestra. I was holding on for dear life, anticipating the next loud burst of brass, just waiting to stop my heart.
All of this is employed to tell the story of a little boy (Ty Simpkins) who’s slipped into a trance-like state as his “astral projection” has journeyed into a dark realm referred to as “The Further” leaving his shell of a body open to possession by any otherworld being that may find its way in. Booga, booga.
Lin Shaye plays the film’s paranormal expert Elise Rainier and she comes on and starts babbling about “astral projections” before offering her solution, which she stereotypically dubs “a little unorthodox” causing chuckles from the audience who are obviously in on the slightly “off” nature of this entire film. Elise is joined by a pair of assistants named Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) who bumble about, playing the “mine’s bigger than yours” game with their paranormal gadgetry and serving as a dose of comic relief, that’s, for the most part, funny.
Carrying the more serious weight are Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne as parents to the tormented child. Barbara Hershey is also on board, playing Wilson’s mother, giving her a second stint in a film of the haunted variety in the last few months.
Insidious delivers with an interesting premise for a horror/thriller as it plays on the haunted house theme, only it’s a human that’s haunted instead of a house. In fact it conjures up immediate comparisons to Paranormal Activity, which may be how Paranormal writer-director Oren Peli was wrangled into a producer’s role, allowing the marketing team to use the “From the makers of Paranormal Activity and Saw” tagline. It’s a fair statement and, surprisingly, even though this was written and directed by Saw duo Leigh Whannell and James Wan respectively, it’s far more Paranormal than it is the gore fest the Saw franchise turned into.
Wan plays Insidious about as straight-forward as possible and it works to some effect, but I couldn’t help but get a bit annoyed at the over use of the score as a source of scares. Combine the image of a freaky character with a loud crash of brass and you’re pretty much guaranteed to scare your audience. Nothing new there. And it grows increasingly tedious as the story progresses to its foggy conclusion.
Movie reviewers love to use the term “rollercoaster ride” in their reviews, and Insidious is one of those films that legitimately reminded me of an amusement park attraction. It’s a movie filled with cheap thrills and amusing antics, but it has a shelf life of about 45-60 minutes, which makes the 90 minute feature a little stale by the end.
