Insidious

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2011)

At the time I saw this it was number one in the American box office chart and it was billed as one of the scariest movies ever, and being from the makers of Saw and Paranormal Activity I was keen to try it, from director James Wan (Saw). Basically the Lambert family, Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) and their three children are settling into their new home they've moved into. Their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) one night hears noises in the attic and goes eight year old to investigate, and he climbs a ladder which has one step step and cause him to fall, and the next morning he has fallen into a mysterious coma. Three months pass and he is still in a coma that the doctor says wasn't caused by the fall, and over the next few days paranormal events occur in the house, Renai seeing and hearing scary things, including a bloody hand print in Dalton's bed and dark figures. Josh agrees that if she is so worried the house is haunted they can move house, however the new house makes no difference as the dark forces have followed them to their location. Therefore Renai has a talk with Josh's mother Lorraine (Black Swan's Barbara Hershey) who refers her to paranormal activity expert Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) who agrees to see them about the fearful goings on. Along with her team, Specs (Saw's Leigh Whannell, also writing) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), and she does confirm that they are being tormented by evil forces, but it is not the house that is haunted, it is Dalton. Because he has the ability to have his soul walk around out of his body, and the coma status has forced him into another dimension guarded by the evil, and there are nasty entities trying to take over his body, but the nearest is a black figure with a red face of fire. With Renai and Josh's agreement they begin a form of exorcism to get rid of the spirits and try to make way for Dalton to come back to the real world, there is a little bit of progress made. Elise tells Josh that he also has the same ability to transport his soul out of his body like Dalton, explained from photo evidence with him as a child and a dark figure getting closer to him, she says the only way to get him back is to enter the demon's world, "the further", without being noticed by the other spirits. Eventually after the near doom Josh does manage to get Dalton out of the spirit world and they both return to their bodies, Renai is relieved to have them both back. In the end we see them slowly going back to normal, and we see Josh really lose it with Elise when she takes a photo of him, he kills her after she sees an evil figure, and the horrible ending is not happy with Renai discovering evil is still present, and we don't know what happens next. Also starring Andrew Astor as Foster Lambert, Heather Tocquigny as Nurse Kelly and Ruben Pla as Dr. Sercarz. I can see the comparison to Paranormal Activity and Poltergeist, and there are elements of a few other haunted house films (even though it's not technically the house), but I genuinely found it scary, I jumped at least five times (even some bits I knew I would I did), I admit some shock value does not work the second time watching, but it is still a really worthwhile scary supernatural horror thriller. Good!