When I shelled out my hard earned cash for a ticket to see the new horror film, Insidious by Saw director James Wan, I expected to see yet another deadly serious attempt at scaring the Bejezuz H. Christ out of me by getting me to entertain the idea that ghosts and demons are real. So, when I sat down in my seat with my wife, Carrie, my attitude was “Okay, let’s do this! I’m ready to be terrified. Do your worst!”
When I shelled out my hard earned cash for a ticket to see the new horror film, Insidious by Saw director James Wan, I expected to see yet another deadly serious attempt at scaring the Bejezuz H. Christ out of me by getting me to entertain the idea that ghosts and demons are real. So, when I sat down in my seat with my wife, Carrie, my attitude was “Okay, let’s do this! I’m ready to be terrified. Do your worst!”
But when the first scare moment in the film was simply a malevolent looking old woman’s face in a window followed by a booming noise and the movie’s title spelled out in big, cartoon gothic letters I suddenly thought, “Oh shit, this is really going to blow.” Oops, I think I was supposed to write “spoiler alert” right before the previous sentence. Sorry, but be warned, there are more.
Now, as I started to get into the meat of the story, I began to prepare myself for an onslaught of tired cliché haunted house film bullshit. Josh and Renai Lambert (played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), have just moved into a new house with their three kids when, you’ll never guess this…they are plagued by a series of unsettling occurrences. The first and most terrifying of these occurrences in my opinion is when Renai has to get their three screaming kids ready for school. You see I’m not really much of a kid person. My idea of real horror is sitting through an episode of Supernanny. Shudder! But, I digress.
Next, a bunch of creepy things start to happen (books fall of shelves, things disappear, ghostly voices are heard, ghostly faces are seen, etc.) culminating with their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) falling into a coma. After more weird stuff happens to the distraught family, Renai concludes their house is haunted and they pack up and move to brand new digs. But, no sooner do they move in, when Renai sees a ghost who looks like a kid straight from the set of Newsies. It turns out the ghosts must have gotten their new address from Facebook because they’ve followed them. And, not only ghosts but a demon who is apparently a big “Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace” fan because he made his face up to look like Darth Maul. It just goes to show you the type of people who liked that film.
Now, the wife is totally freaked out and the dad, in true horror tradition, doesn’t believe it. So, they hire two nerdy parapsychologists named, “Specs” (because he wears glasses, get it?) and “Tucker” (I guess because he tucks his shirt in), who serve as the “comedy” relief. Specs makes a comments about keeping action figures in the package while Tucker grunts acerbic comments about his self importance and suddenly, I can’t help thinking, “Were these roles originally written for Brian Posehn, and he turned them down? I’ll have to ask him.”
To this mix, we add Josh’s mom Lorraine, (Barbara Hershey) and friend of the family/psychic medium, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), who explains that the real reason Dalton is in a coma is that he has been astral projecting, and wandered into a bad neighborhood of the spirit world called “The Further” where he’s been trapped by the Darth Maul demon. To make matters worse, the demon and hordes of tortured souls are now coming to claim Dalton’s soulless body, leading Elise to utter the film’s tagline, “It’s not the house that’s haunted. It’s your son.” Luckily, father Josh also has the ability to astral project and ventures into the spirit world to bring his boy home. It’s like the old saying goes, the family that astral projects together…
The last part of the film comes off more like the climax of a Freddy Krueger film (minus the gore) with Josh kicking ass in the astral plane like some sort of suburban Doctor Strange, and it was at this point that I suddenly realized that my initial horror snob attitude about this film was wrong. All this time I had actually been having a really good time. I finally got it! This wasn’t just another knockoff of Paranormal Activity. It belonged more to the family of films like, “Drag Me to Hell or Phantasm. I would liken the sophistication of the scares to the kind when your friend pretends to push you into oncoming traffic, but then stops you and says, “Saved your life!” It’s basic, but effective. There’s about a hundred smash cuts to creepy faces accompanied by loud sounds, giving this movie a haunted corn maze/Knott‘s Scary Farm kind of feel. It’s unapologetic in its attempts to keep you off balance by throwing the kitchen sink at you.
Is this the best horror film I’ve ever seen? No. Does it in any way make me doubt my opinions concerning the existence of the supernatural? No, not really. Was it a fun way to spend an afternoon? Definitely. Well, except for the part where the couple next to us had to have a continuing conversation during the last 45 minutes of the film. What could they have possibly been talking about? Maybe they were discussing the moral implications of the piece? Well, I could have saved them the trouble. If there’s one moral to be had from Insidious it’s this: Don’t have children. They’re annoying, disrespectful, and are always getting possessed.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go genuinely scare the shit out of myself. I just got Mr. Mom on Blu-ray.
–Matt Weinhold, who STILL thinks you’re wrong about the Star Trek reboot.
