Insidious and Chills?: A Movie Review

*Here be some spoilers.

Director: James Wan.

Writer: Leigh Whannell.

The problem with horror movies made today is that they are never designed to elicit genuine chills anymore. They are nothing but thrill-rides, shock-fests, and reinventions of older classics. Insidious lives up to its name by slowly festering the terror, and also literally giving up the ghost by giving meaning to what is on the other side. Nothing is left up to the imagination anymore, and if ol’ yellow-eyes had a name in this film, it would be Darth Maul.

This demon is supposed to be everything that nightmares are made of; it has to be a poisonous malignant force of evil. It is everything that Lucas wanted to create, but failed to truly become in a galaxy far, far away. In the World of Insidious, this entity is out to take possession of a young boy, Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins) and it never appears for more than a few seconds. When this creature does persist on screen, it moves like a fast slithering reptile. It crawls about, perhaps serving another master, waiting to pounce.

This movie is effective in creating that menace by hiding the supernatural world in the everyday life of a nuclear family. Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) have just moved to a new home. But little do they know, there is something else just biding its time to manifest.

This film takes a few cues from producer Oren Peli’s own work, Paranormal Activity and, fortunately, it does not rely on the first person shaky cam perspective to make this film personal. When Renai cannot take the haunting anymore, they move. Even Steven Spielberg’s movie, Poltergeist, gets a nod too. There is a familiar looking kitchen set in the home they’ve relocated to.

That is when director James Wan from the Saw franchise ups the ante. The phantoms have followed them, and when Renai has an encounter of the phantasmic kind, Josh’s mother, Lorraine Lambert (Barbara Hershey) calls on the help of two paranormal investigators, Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), and a medium, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). The two investigators provide some comedy relief that really is not needed, and Elise tries to be like Tangina, the psychic from the first Poltergeist movie. However, she does not quite provide the same mystique and charm that Zelda Rubinstein put into the role.

And neither does the spirit world—the astral realm looks like it came out of Disneyland's California Adventure’s Tower of Terror attraction (i.e. The Twilight Zone) with a dose of the Haunted Mansion mixed in. The design and backdrop is very apropos for what the spirit world would look like if it was circa 1940. But when it comes to legitimizing what astral projection and the dream world is all about, this film is way off its mark when considering all the published lore that is out there. Rainer's concept of The Further is an interesting concept, but real scares could have been elicited if the movie explored what could happen when the silver cord is severed and there is no way home.

Overall: 4 out of 10.

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Insidious' Homepage

Films mentioned in this review:



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Posted in: barbera hershey,chronicles of the paranormal,demonology,devon sawa,haunted house,insidious,james wan,oren peli,paranormal activity,patrick wilson,poltergeist,rose byrne,Ty Simpkins