On the right track....

Rating: 5/10 (21 July 2011)

Insidious started out as a standard haunted house/possessed movie and was doing a great job of it. It was using a simple but effective formula of slowly building up the scares. Something that a lot of new horror misses is the fact that the anticipation leading up to the scare, the suspense, is where the movie is made. The first half of the movie did this very effectively. Then, all of a sudden, they tell a short and thrown together back story as to why everything is happening the way it is and go totally in a different direction. The second half of the movie is mostly gimmicks with one obvious twist after another and even gets hard to watch at times. While the first half of the movie is almost great, the second half is quite awful. Another great example of an opportunity missed.