Entertaining and definitely above what passes as average nowadays

Rating: 6/10 (4 January 2012)

A family of five - including two boys and a baby girl - have just moved into their new home. They attempt to settle in and go about their lives until one morning the father discovers the eldest boy, Dalton, has slipped into a coma; doctors are baffled by his condition. Whilst he is tended to in his home, the family begin to experience strange goings-on in the house.
This is the premise for Insidious; a modern horror that makes a solid attempt to deliver a haunted house film reminiscent of Poltergeist and the likes. It opens with a suitably creepy scene in which the camera pans from room to room in a house whilst all sleep, following a foreboding silhouette in a window until fixing upon the figure of an old woman. This really sets the tone for what is to come and draws the viewer right in. What follows in the next hour-and-a-half is pretty much what this film's audience will be expecting but the results are still well executed; the shocks put in place throughout the course of the film are generally well timed and many of them genuinely make the skin crawl regardless of whether or not it's something you're likely to have seen before in a film.
Whilst the climax may be a bit generic and will therefore likely disappoint some, it's a decent enough pay-off if all you want is to be entertained. I personally thought it worked and felt natural in context with all the events leading up to it. If I had to give another criticism, it would be the characters who are just bland. But who goes into a film like this for its performances?
If you're one of those who complains about all the gratuitous violence and gore in horror these days, you'll find Insidious quite welcome. It isn't massively original and probably isn't a film worth watching again, but it is still well worth seeing and I would recommend it as an excellent rental choice.