More like Inshi -- nah, it's not worth it

Rating: 5/10 (13 October 2012)

Insidious is not a haunted house movie. This is something that the movie tagline and all of its ads trumpet, but it still treats it as a major revelation. So for the first 45 minutes or so we're forced through the umpteenth rehash of Amityville, with the same stock characters and cheap scares one would expect from James "Saw" Wan. Well, that's not entirely fair -- it avoids Wan's penchant for blood and gore, but doubles down on loud noises and quick flashes of something that wouldn't look very scary in the light. I'm fine with a bit of misdirection, even an extended pretense at being a different type of movie -- hell, I loved Audition -- but when this lasts for half the film, and is as bad as this is, it has to be regarded as a failure.
When we finally get to the actual cause of the spooky events things pick up a bit. It's still not exactly a good movie, but it's a fairly entertaining one, replete with long-held secrets and weird spirits. Insidious creates its own mythology, and it's expectedly unwieldy, but still more interesting than what it was before. It's still braindead, but for about half an hour it's thoroughly addictive popcorn fare.
But the characters are too generic and the baddie too vague to ultimately sustain interest, and the de riguer twist ending is just tiresome. What gets me is that it's not as though the extended misdirection is even necessary for, or builds suspense to, the entertaining half-hour that is the peak of Insidious. Maybe Wan wouldn't have been able to extend that second act to feature length, but at least he could try. As it is, Insidious doesn't fulfill its ambitions and spends most of its time shooting itself in the foot. The fact that this has been described by some as the best horror of the year doesn't speak well for the genre.