A great atmosphere is let down by everything else being a total mess

Rating: 2/10 (1 February 2012)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Rose (Reni Lambert) move with their young son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) into a new home. However, after Dalton suffers a fall, his parents find him trapped in a coma he can't seem to break free from. Worse, shortly afterwards, spooky events take place around the house, causing them to relocate again...only for these events to follow them, causing them to face a terrifying truth about their son that will force them to go above their realm of belief to save him.
If Insidious does nothing else right (which it doesn't) it does create a terrific, unnerving atmosphere that fits it's status as a horror film perfectly, not only in the opening titles with the jarring, skin crawling soundtrack, but the impressively grey, drained cinematography in the set up that follows, with an impressive use of no sound to hammer this home.
Saw director James Wan shows more restraint and ditches the blood/gore excess and concentrates on setting up the ground work for a decent horror picture. Sadly, he fails to create characters we can care about or a story that is in any way engaging, leaving it to degenerate more and more into preposterousness which robs some of the admittedly eerie scenes of their effectiveness.
Horror is one of those genres where if it's done right, things work wonders but when it doesn't, it's just a complete mess, which sadly is the case with Insidious. Atmospherically, and even visually, it's perfect, but sadly all the other components fail to come together and despite being a short film, it feels like a big slog to get to the end. *