Not very original and not very scary

Rating: 3/10 (14 May 2011)

Some of my friends told me it was one of the scariest movie they ever saw... After having seen it, I am dumbfounded by what makes people scared and what not. I also agree with the people saying it has a lot of poltergeist rip offs. But also from the shining and i presume a lot of other horror movies. The movie was very cliché like... "Girls always have to scream when they get scared" "The electricity always fail when evil is present" "small children run around as decoys" ... etc etc The acting becomes strained because of how strangely the characters react to different situations. There was a lack of genuine response and emotions in certain situations. Take for example the scene where they boy has just been "comatised"; The father coldly asks the doctor "so, what do we do...? should we stay here or..." What parents would even ask such a question? No parent in their right mind, traumatised or not would even think to ask that. If they would have just focused on Rose Byrne's -at least genuine felt- feelings and he just stayed quiet that scene would have been OK.
This kind of non real reactions to situations just disturbed me throughout the movie.
Even tough I could have coped with this, the movie all of a sudden went very "theatrical". Meaning they showed way too much of faces wearing way too much paint, acting way too theatrically. It just killed the suspense, making it more of an "action" movie than a horror movie.
Thinking back on the movie I think there was too many logical errors. If you can talk about logic when talking about "paranormal" happenings. For example... Dead, -evile?- people are trying to get to the other side by using other bodies as vessels... but still they can get through to the other side physically and attack people seemingly when it suits them... So why the h*** do they need a vessel for?... why not take over the world anyways? Other scenes seemed just random, adding no explanation to what was happening.
The use of string instruments for creating suspense is OK if used conservatively, but in insidious they were just overused to no end! Sometimes I felt like I was watching a black and white horror movie.
There is only one twist in the movie, and you will know where it is if I say that this twist occurs where all horror movies always have a twist. I hope to God though, there will not be an Insidious 2.
The cinematography worked, although I felt the camera was sometimes too far away from what was happening where it should have been close to the actor. The smoke/fog machine was used a little bit too much when it was used. The camera angles where non-original and mostly panned, glided or zoomed.
What about the good stuff? Yes, what about it? For me, I think the best scene in the movie was when one of the "nerds" in the psychic team went around the house taking camera snapshots with different color-filters. It reminded me somewhat of when playing the computer game "fatal frame".
I give this movie a 5 for cinematography, a 2 for story, and a 3 for acting. In total a 3.