INSIDIOUSly crappy

Rating: 5/10 (29 October 2011)

I read several comments posted here, of grown up men with wife and kids who went on and on about how scary this movie was and how it almost made them pi-, I mean, wet their pants or scream like little girls. So, long story short, I was eager to watch this one, especially because a movie with this budget that succeeds where so many million-dollar-blockbusters fail would have been epic and praiseworthy as a feat in itself.
The movie is not so bad for the first half or so, during which it behaves like an "average" psychological-horror, that is to say, a movie that works solely on atmosphere coupled with a good photography, music and sound effects to create a sense of tension and/or fear; and it does that relatively well, despite being rather slow paced, uneventful and based on a weak plot. So, to wrap it up: no gore, no special effects, and I'd say, no plot twists.
So far it would have been a decent movie (like, 6/10) with some scares (very few) but also pretty boring overall. Fact is that the second part of the movie is actually quite lame, starting from the unnecessary "comic relief" of the nerdy "paranormal investigators" and continuing with the ridiculous "monsters"/spirits, the related paranormal mumbo-jumbo (this time involuntarily comic, I guess) and the laughable "quest" to save the possessed child.
The general acting level left me very unimpressed, and I think that plot, pace, visual effects and ending also leave much to be desired.
However, I keep seeing a lot of 1/10 or 9-10/10 flying around these days on here, which I believe to be extremely unbalanced and almost always undeserved. My rating for this movie is 5/10: surely more than watchable (if you like this kind of "soft horror", that is), but surely not worthy of all the hype surrounding it, and thus deceiving, or better, insidiously crappy.