Why you should and shouldn't see Insidious

Rating: Null/10 (3 October 2011)

What I Learned 1. Ghosts of newspaper boys love Tiny Tim's 1968 rendition of the 1926 song "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." 2. Skeptical Husband never calls the police. 3. A modified Viewmaster makes an excellent ghost-detector. 4. When your astral body is walking through the nothingness, the nothingness has an astral floor to support your astral shoes. 5. Skeptical Husband is skeptical. 6. If you're wearing a plaid flannel shirt, your astral body is wearing a plaid flannel astral shirt just like it. (Drop it onto the astral floor and see if it disappears.) 7. The Further is very far, but it takes no time at all to get there, because sort of it's right here, or something. 8. All you really need for Halloween is white makeup, dark lipstick, a steady stare and a great big smile. A bloodstain on your chest is just a bonus.
Extra Credit Scenes
After the very last of the credits there's one brief spooky shot that doesn't add to the storyline at all. However if you sit through the credits anyway, you'll see that the film has "additional photagraphy," a "first assistant editor" and no proofreader.
The Story Begins The Lamberts have just moved into a creaky old home, and while husband Josh is out, something strange happens, frightening strangely-spelled Renai (Byrne). Then Dalton (Simpkins) fails to wake up one morning, and when the usual tests don't turn up anything, instead of running this rare, journal-worthy diagnostic challenge by the greatest scientific minds in the field of neurology, the child's doctor says something like "oh well, sorry about that," and sends him home in his coma-like state with a rented hospital bed and a nurse to show Renai where the tube goes. That's when the really weird things start happening: Renai (really, it's pronounced like Renee, so why spell it like "Ren-eye?") finds chairs moved, feels like she's being watched, and suspects that the ones watching her just might be the creepy dead white people who keep startling her, and us in the audience, badly (the sudden abuse of musical instruments in the soundtrack doesn't help).
What I think
In spite of the Saw alumni who made Insidious, this scary fun is of the good, old-fashioned variety, which creeps you way-the-heck out and makes you jump out of your seat whenever it can--no drill-bits or bear traps required. See it while it's in the theater, and make sure it's a digital presentation with a modern sound system, so that you get the full effect when the malevolent voices mutter and the soundtrack artists slam objects against the strings of an open piano, just as a crazy-eyed pale face comes into view. If you get too skeeved out, don't worry: paranormal researchers Specs and Tucker (Whannell and Sampson) will provide some comic relief to relax you just in time to be startled out of your pants again.
Why you should see it: Ghosts are fun.
Why you shouldn't see it: You're a fraidy-cat.
--from my review at www.1man365movies.com