Product Description
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From the makers of Paranormal Activity, Insidious is the
terrifying story of a family who, shortly after moving, discovers
that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son
has inexplicably fallen into a coma. Trying to escape the
haunting and save their son, they move again only to realize that
it was not their house that was haunted.
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For most of its first half, Insidious creeps along in top form
as a classical haunted house movie, seething with chilling riffs
and cinematic idioms that embrace the best elements of the genre.
Director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell (the cocreative team
that unleashed the Saw franchise onto unsuspecting moviegoers in
2004) create a genuine sense of foreboding that many audiences
may experience as the kind of imagery vaguely recalled from
actual nightmares. Shadowy figures are glimpsed behind curtains
or are barely visible through darkened windows, with the tension
building from something that is only halfway there. Or maybe that
something is all the way there and we just can't make it out
clearly enough through the haze of our gathering dread. There
aren't any cheap thrills or phony es; the menacing tone is
measured and well earned and doesn't have to rely on things
jumping out of the darkness. The terror often comes from what we
don't see, or rather what we're afraid we're about to see.
It's a simple story about a young family--Josh (Patrick Wilson)
and Renai (Rose Byrne) and their three small children--settling
into a new home. Again following classical form, there's a
presence in the house that either doesn't want them there, or
needs them to stay for the evilest possible reasons. When
8-year-old Dalton (Ty Simpkins) falls into an unexplained coma
after a spooky encounter in the attic, Renai starts seeing the
above-mentioned figures lurking around the house, sometimes none
too subtly. Though the goings-on are unexplainable, no one acts
crazy and Josh believes that his wife's bizarre encounters are
real. Like any sensible people who believe they've taken up
residence in a haunted house, they move. But the spookiness moves
with them and the menace gets worse as months pass and Dalton
remains unconscious without reasonable medical cause. Since
things can't stay unexplained forever, the plot begins to
intrude, especially when a geeky pair of paranormal investigators
(Angus Sampson and writer Leigh Whannell) provide some slightly
out-of-kilter comic . Fortunately their boss (Lin Shaye) is
a bona fide psychic who's all business, and she determines that
the ghosts, or demons, or whatever they are want Dalton, not the
house or its other inhabitants. As the explanations continue,
it's revealed that the little boy has the gift of astral
projection and his spirit has left his body without really
knowing it's gone. If he doesn't come back soon he'll be lost
forever, taken by the strongest of the creepy phantoms, a
blood-red fiend who provides the most terrifying moments of
half-glimpsed horror. It turns out that Dalton inherited his gift
from Dad, who has repressed his own childhood encounters with
out-of-body flight, but must revisit the dark limbo where all the
specters lurk in order to reunite his son's body and soul.
All this narrative sometimes gets in the way of the sinister
unknowns that started the story, but there are still plenty of
frights to maintain a consistently disturbing tone (and without a
drop of blood or gore). Wan and Whannell preserve the
less-is-more strategy to fine effect, honoring the legacy of a
timeless horror style while ably stamping it with their own
unique imprimatur. Whether or not you have a personal history of
nightmares, there are plenty of willies to go around in the eerie
confines of Insidious--an apt title for a movie whose ideas and
images invade the mind with y and spectral imagination. --Ted
Fry