Insidious is Truly Insidious

Rating: 9/10 (17 April 2011)

How many horror movies are actually scary? Three, maybe four? Make that five. Insidious just made the list.
James Wan's Insidious is unusual in every sense of the word. It's a 100-minute thrill ride that is a homage to countless horror movies, including Poltergeist and The Shining, and often enough, Insidious succeeds in bringing the scares. Terrifying and entertaining, Insidious threatens its viewer with an insulting amount of jump scares, however it does not matter when the result is this good. Popcorn entertainment may not be this fun again for a while.
Insidious' plot may sound contrived, and that's because it is. Leigh Whanell's original script borrows a lot of previous horror greats. Renai (Rose Byrne) and Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) are a married couple with three children that have just moved into a new house. Yet not everything is perfect. The protagonists' marriage is tense and cold and there's something deeply unsettling about their home. It isn't long before one of their sons, Dalton, falls from a ladder while he is investigating a noise in the attic and becomes comatose. The house isn't done with the Lamberts yet. And the filmmakers aren't done with us either.
Wan shows a clear sense of maturity with Insidious. That is to say that he has stepped it up from the bloody albeit twisty Saw and the boring Dead Silence. Insidious alludes to past horror masterpieces frequently, and after all, isn't copying the sincerest form of flattery? Wan uses all this to his advantage--Insidious becomes creaky, slow carnival ride that never lets up. Wan has clearly learned from the masters; now he's just showing off.
As if Insidious' atmospheric tone wasn't enough, Wan has made Insidious a textbook example of horror done right. Lighting is used to create intrigue and mystery; the camera whirls and shakes to give the film an unsettling dissonance. Often Insidious verges on corny, but this is all with good intent. Violins certainly hit the high notes to give the viewer chills.
But Insidious is far from perfect. In fact, Wan's film is still marred by many flaws, notably a tonal change about halfway through that nearly wrecks any momentum gained in the quiet first act. It also seems that every two minutes there is a jump scene. This is a something that works at first, but by the end of it, it gets to be a bit much. And while there is some much needed comic relief in some of the scariest parts, it doesn't quite hang together when jokes are made. Furthermore, some elements of the plot are nonsensical, yet all this can be missed when disbelief is suspended.
In 2009, Paranormal Activity was hailed as one of the scariest movies ever. It's time for Insidious to get the recognition it deserves. Insidious may not be everyone's type of horror movie, but it's an intelligent, scary, and well-made film designed for people who actually care about watching movies. Although Insidious may take itself way too seriously, it's hard to ignore a film that is so intensely scary as this. There's one scene where Lorraine, played by Barbra Hershey, says, "I had a dream last night. I was in the house. I was very afraid." Aren't we all, darling.