You may enjoy it more if you have zero expectations

Rating: 6/10 (23 April 2011)

I am a horror movie fan and I try to catch horror movies that get a good word-of-mouth. This movie "Insidious" is one such movie, with some critics giving it an A rating, very rare in the horror genre.
"Insidious" involves a child, and that is usually a positive thing among horror classics, like "The Exorcist," "The Omen" and "Poltergeist" to "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others." Little Dalton Lambert suddenly falls into an unexplained coma one day, with no plausible medical explanation. From then on, their house began to manifest various ghostly goings-on that scares the living hell out of his parents Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne). Pushed to the wall, they consult paranormal "experts" to solve their supernatural problems. Can Dalton still be saved?
The device used to explain what happened to Dalton and what can be done to deal with the situation was quite ingeniously conceived by the writer Leigh Whannell. However, the execution though by the director James Wan is a tad disappointing in several parts. This movie pulls out all of the traditional horror tricks to make this movie scary. The shadowy darkness, the loud startling music, all to bring about a creepy atmosphere and jolting surprises and screams from the audience. The images of the ghostly tormentors while disturbing and unsettling are more weird than really scary.
I believe that I may have been affected by expecting too much from this film. I was expecting an A-rated horror movie, but ended up rating it as merely an average one for the genre.