An Excellent, Eerie Ghost Tale

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2011)

I'm always impressed when a studio manages to create an entertaining horror/thriller film with a PG-13 rating. The lower rating means the film won't be relying on gore effects to rattle the audience, instead relying on atmosphere, creepy music, and hauntings rather than eviscerations. It's odd to think this movie comes from James Wan, the director responsible for the original SAW (the film that jump-started the world's love for torture porn). The film focuses on the Lambert family; Josh (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) move into a new home with their three children and mysterious occurrences begin almost immediately. Exploring the attic, their son Dalton falls from a ladder and, while he appears fine at first, he soon falls into an inexplicable coma. As her son lies comatose, Renai begins to experience instances of garbled voices over the baby monitor and visions of people in the house. Despite her husband's skepticism, Renai is sure something supernatural is involved. She finds help in Elise Ranier (Lin Shaye), a medium assisted by two socially-inept paranormal investigators, who delivers some grave news to Josh and Renai: it's not the house that's haunted, it's their son.
I love a good haunting film (especially the adaptation of Stephen King's 1408). Ghosts and poltergeists are much creepier than masked psychos, in my opinion. INSIDIOUS doesn't bring anything new to the genre and borrows a lot of the same clichés, but at least the filmmakers try to do it with their own style. There is the usual séance scene, but to up the creep-factor Elise wears an old gas mask and shares the experience by muttering into the headphones of her associate Specs, who transcribes the conversation and passes it on to the confused family. I've read a lot of posts and seen a lot of web reviews of people who seem pretty terrified of this movie. I'm sure their exaggerating a bit as there's nothing really to scream about, but the movie does a great job of keeping the chills consistent. In what was personally the eeriest sequence in the film, Renai is cleaning her new home listening to some music on an old record player. She steps out take out the trash and the record player crackles, switching to the warbling sound of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips". Then, through a window, we see a young boy dressed straight out of the '20s dancing a little jig. By the time Renai rushes back inside, everything's back to normal. Little weird bits like that keep you on edge throughout the film (you know, unless you've been desensitized to normal spooks).
I loved how the film touched on astral projection. Rather than running the same route as POLTERGEIST and other ghost films, it touches on a supernatural element we never really see in movies. The ghosts populating the other world, the "Further" as Elise calls it, were great. The cast does an awesome job here, everyone filling out the usual roles we find in these sorts of movies: the tormented wife, the skeptical husband, the strange medium, etc. I thought the paranormal investigators (played by Angus Sampson and screenwriter Leigh Whannell) were fun as the comic relief in the later parts of the film where things are starting to get serious. Overall, it's a really well-done ghost story with very little detracting from it. I did think it took a bit long to get into the story. It's a pretty slow build-up as the family is introduced before we get into the meat of it all. I was also sort of put off by the ending (though I'll avoid details here). It would've been fine if it had tied up all the loose ends, but leaving it open for a sequel means there's a chance for more films to milk a potential franchise when I'd much rather have a real good one-off thriller.