Film's Potential was Lost in the "Further."‏

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2011)

As a connoisseur of paranormal cinema - especially films dealing with haunted houses, ghosts, parapsychology, etc. - I was eager to see Insidious. Ultimately the film is a major letdown, but it does deliver a handful of satisfying moments which underscore the movie's unfulfilled potential. All in all, Insidious is an inferior, though not entirely worthless, entry into the subgenre. At the very least, it functions as a case study for us to examine what does and does not work in the art of storytelling.
First of all, and more than anything, this movie had an amazing concept: Two parents are put to the test when their child's spirit is lost through astral projection. Doesn't that sound awesome? Not only does it work on paper, but it could've and should've worked on celluloid too. Mainly I think the poor execution is a result of the filmmaker's overall approach to the subject matter. In trying to cleverly lead the audience along on a Shyamalan-esque guessing game ("why won't Dalton wake up? what are all these entities?"), the filmmakers succeed in boring the audience through the entire first act, and half of the second. Not to mention ruining potential replay value in the process.
When the explanation of events does finally occur, the already amateurish script resorts to a formulaic monologue so transparent in it's delivery of exposition that I have to wonder if the writer even bothered with a second draft. It would've been more honest on the filmmakers' part if the medium character just looked directly into the camera while telling us about "the place that I call the Further." ...I'm joking of course - never tell the audience something when you can show them.
Another gripe I have is the parapsychologist characters (aka the comic relief nerds). I swear, these two belong in a TV commercial for Progressive Insurance or Best Buy or something. Don't get me wrong, I love the general idea of bringing in parapsychologists, and their inclusion, unlike that of the stereotypical medium, was both useful and praiseworthy. But having a couple of Hot Pocket eating comedy characters show up halfway through an otherwise serious horror film is incongruous to say the least. By themselves they were pretty entertaining, but that kind of humor simply didn't belong in the film as is. It felt forced and unnatural.
Though perhaps the biggest error in the script - the most ridiculous, unnecessary, convoluted plot twist - was the revelation that Dalton's father was an astral traveler in the past ....but somehow forgot, and then passed on this forgotten ability to his son. As if genetics had anything to do with it. Would it not have been more dramatic, and less convoluted, if for example the father (or even multiple characters) had to learn astral projection?
Well, in spite of all it's flaws, Insidious does occasionally follow through on it's concept's promise. An unsettling atmosphere pervades a number of scenes, and the spectral realm itself is effectively rendered with soft greens and blues which dimly illuminate the lingering impressionistic fog. Although rather trivial in the grand scheme of things, this visual approach does provide a requisite moodiness to the latter sequences. And this mood is further augmented by the surreal presence of (virtually) motionless entities, some of which resemble idyllic 1950's suburbanites. While the effectiveness of these elements makes the aforementioned flaws all the more lamentable by highlighting the film's lost potential, they also happen to accentuate the movie's pseudo-Lovecraftian ending, thereby giving Insidious, at the very least, a strong outro.
If however the filmmakers had been more up front with the audience regarding the film's concept, perhaps by opening with an astral projection scene, they could have spent more time exploring various themes, while simultaneously intensifying the drama. Instead, the film sacrifices an intellectual approach in favor of a more generic treatment, which heavily relies on mood and horror-pops for most of it's running time. Too bad - it could have been so much better.