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Rating: 1/10 (6 July 2011)

Insidious is a typical b-product from the scary movie genre. Its story is a collection of clichés from the Japanese horror wave of the past decade and the American remakes thereof. Haunted house et cetera.
It is a sure sign of poor writing skills when a movie has characters sitting around explaining the plot for minutes on end, and this movie has a lot of that. An awful lot. This is exacerbated by the fact that the audience arrives at every major conclusion about 30 minutes before the characters do, and the predictability of the plot should even make the end quite unsurprising for the average viewer.
The dismal and dreary visual style is actually not a bad choice for the subject and some of the photography was quite agreeable, but the editing and overall feel of it seemed a bit much like a television production. The acting was below average and the two geeks were nice distraction though they were clearly under-used.
Due to the total lack of atmosphere, Insidious relies heavily on the over-use of cheap thrills like creaking doors, creepy or sudden music or noises and suddenly appearing ghosts and demons. Just like the haunted house at the local funfair. Yes, it will scare you for a moment, but you will call it a rip-off at the exit nonetheless. Some scenes that were clearly meant to provide suspense were even involuntary funny and laughed at by the audience.
The only thing that really scared me is that so many users proved to have obviously never seen a really good movie by rating this stinker at an insane 7.0 and nearly half a million people like it on facebook. I personally rate this movie a miserable failure.