Insidious

(2011) **

Young couple, Josh and Renai, and their 3 boys move into an enormous, grim old house in the suburbs. In the grand tradition of Poltergeist strange things begin happening as the family makes themselves comfortable (e.g. doors opening and closing on their own, books falling off a shelves, etc). When the oldest son sneaks off to explore the attic, he is involved in an accident and falls into a coma. Fast-forward 3 months where we find that the boy is still in a coma and being cared for at home. At the insistence of Renai the family relocates to a modern house but find that they are still being plagued by the paranormal (didn’t they learn anything from JUON?). Eventually 2 ghost busters are brought in to address this spooky situation.



I was into Insidious for the first half of the film, I really was. The paranormal activity had all been done before but damnit, it still worked! Despite its small budget the film boasts some style and I liked the cheap scares of silence punctuated by loud musical jabs. I stopped liking Insidious the moment the ghost busters showed up, in particular the female, who for some reason just makes me want to smash her face. It didn’t help that she was coincidentally featured in Dead End, the next movie I watched after this one.


One this woman showed up JPX stopped liking Insidious

The tone of Insidious changes once the ghost busters arrive. What was a creepy, clichéd haunted house film quickly devolves into a rip off of the Twilight Zone episode “Little Girl Lost”. The climax occurs in a place called “The Further”, which is really just a big house filled with fog. Nope, this didn’t’ work for me at all.