Review: Insidious
Insidious So after much hesitation I resolved to watch Insidious. Touted by many to be the scariest film of the year if not ever, I decided to see what the hype was all about.
Starring Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson, the film begins with the mundane and relatively relatable task of unpacking boxes into a new house. Tragedy strikes when their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) seemingly falls into an unexplainable coma. After this Renai (Byrne) begins to notice things in the house, and by things I mean voices and shadows and in one particular ‘shit yourself’ moment a face in the window behind her baby’s cot. Worried about the house being haunted she insists they move, like any sane person would. However when strange things begin to happen (and when I say strange, I mean dancing little man weird) in the new house Renai calls in ‘other’ help, as in non scientific help, or illogical, whatever you prefer.
The film has it’s jumpy moments but it plunges into the depths of the ridiculous when the reasoning behind the haunting surface. The house clearly wasn’t the problem, it was the boy Dalton. Apparently what the parents didn’t figure out was the when dreaming the boy can separate himself from his body and explore the depths of the dream world, however in one of these excursions he travels too far and into The Further where he is being kept hostage by a dangerous demon and therefore can’t return to his physical being which is why he seems to be in a coma. Wow. Well, I would’ve never guessed that. Now they just have to figure out how to get him back. Perhaps by sending in the father who also has this ability to separate himself from his physical state.
Films such as Paranormal Activity and even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are more effective in the horror genre because we don’t actually see the villain/murdering psycho/ghost (or not properly in the case of Leatherface) so it gives us a fear of the unknown. Seeing the spirits and demons in Insidious work against it, only because the film begins to lose momentum after the audience know what is happening and who the bad guy is. Also, the spirits themselves reminded me of The House of Wax which in my opinion was slightly comical, even their marketing was laughable. So the main problem with Insidious is that it shows too much, we see the monster and we all know it’s far more scary when we don’t know what’s going on.
