We have just witnessed that horror isn't dead.

Rating: 9/10 (10 October 2011)

Now I think everyone can agree that the last decade of horror movies has just been one remake and gross-out after another. Nothing has lived up to the expectations of the originals as well as nothing original has come out. It's usually something we've always seen before, however it really isn't the fault of the use of dilapidated old houses or mansions every now and then. It's more from the clichÃ©s and no feelings for any characters because the filmmakers have been mostly trying to gross us out instead of trying to make time to create people we care about as well as to do what horror movies should do, and that is to scare us. Yet it was in 2007 when Paranormal Activity came out I caught a glimpse of the future of horror. It replaces Saw as the Halloween movie to see and now we are at last getting something good from these places called "film studios." Drag Me to Hell definitely kept things going in the right direction in 2009 and now we have Insidious. Horror movies are finally (as well as unbelievably) getting better. And Insidious is just another reason why we shouldn't give up horror movies.
The story is pretty straight-forward. A family moves into this old house then strange things start happening as well as their son falling into coma. Of course you would think the haunting has something to do with it but you never know with these movies sometimes. At first it looks like the same old kind of horror story you find from the Masters of Horror series but it progresses from that into a full blown horror movie that made me jump, squirm, and even almost scream. Even though I didn't scream I still said "Oh my God!" maybe a hundred times. This definitely went beyond my expectations.
But it's hard to find the perfect movie for its genre and there are a few minor problems. One being that the strength of the film kinda lightens up in the last act but still maintains some of the eeriness of the rest of it. My last complaint is that when the last act starts coming to an end you can pretty much guess how it's going to end. Now with any other movie these would be the problems that could possibly destroy it. And actually those rules don't apply to Insidious. The film is held up by its eerie atmosphere that grabs you from the very beginning and the talented actors to relate to you by being normal people.
The film is actually a collaboration from the creator of Paranormal Activity and the creators of Saw, you would think that such a collaboration would be disastrous but it actually was probably one of the smartest collaborations since Wes Craven worked with Kevin Williamson on the Scream movies (first two and the fourth). There is no gore (which surprised me considering the Saw creators were in on it) or even any blood at all. The movie does what scary movies should do and that is to scare and not gross-out. So while there are some problems, Insidious is probably one of the scariest movies of the year and helps create something original out of the so frequently used ghost stories with haunted, old houses. And that's what is so good about Insidious. It shows that most of the time it's not the setting or the story that makes horror movies bad, it can be the filmmakers and no inspiration put into it. So I just hope that this can be a model for other horror movies and show that there is originality in what was once an almost dead genre.