Best haunted house film in years, just OK on the demonic possession front

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2011)

There's a scene in "Star 80" where a hooker tells john Paul Schneider (Eric Roberts) why, despite his coarseness and unattractiveness, he's got to be her best lover. "Honey, you just plain...try harder," she laughs. One could say the same about James Wan's films. Though sometimes falling a bit flat in their morass of fantastical elements or dissolving a bit too quickly in their frenetic camera-work, you can't deny the heart and energy he injects into his movies. It they're failures, they're not from a lack of trying.
While "Insidious" is most definitely not a failure --- it's actually the creepiest haunted house movie I've seen in maybe thirty years --- it suffers from the More is Too Much curse of much modern horror, at least in the demonic possession realm.
What keeps it going, and ultimately wins us over, is the acting and the brilliant casting choices. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne are usually good in whatever they do, but they're spot on here as a clueless couple whose son falls victim to a mysterious coma (or so they think). In trying to find some solution to not only their son's sinister "illness" and to the havoc that plagues not one, but two, houses they attempt to start a life in, they bring in ghost hunter Lin Shaye and her two assistants, one played by Wan partner and (once again) screenwriter Leigh Whanell. Shay is exceptional and Barbara Hershey continues her run of good, believable supporting work since "Black Swan."
Wan's pacing and shot set-ups are craftily constructed, devilishly executed, and the use of the discordant piano chords ("Black Christmas" anyone?) is surprisingly effective. The problems come when the demons get a bit too "visible" and therefore lose a lot of their shock value. There's a bit toward the end, however, where several wax-looking figures pop up that makes you rethink that rationale...there's something in this sequence that's creepy in the extreme, but it doesn't last long.
The demonic possession aspect of the film was an unfortunate combo of chestnuts I've heard before, and an overly complex explanation...it didn't do much for me and explained too much about too little. I'd have been more curious about the apparent homicides that seem to have taken place in one of the houses, though this is never expounded upon.
Whatever the details prove out or don't, the overall effect of the movie is unsettling, and while I'd have preferred a bit more atmospherics, what we get is still far and away better than the usual pappy crappy pablum of films like "The Haunting in Connecticut."