Insidious Review

In recent years the horror film genre has been made up of two ways of scaring audiences. The first way is by showcasing people get killed in nonstop graphically violent ways. The second is by making use of the “found footage” craze, in which we are told that what we are seeing on screen actually happened. Those methods of storytelling have dominated the horror genre for a long time. In so doing, very rarelly has a movie come around where it literally scares us. Not by using the genuine methods that we are all used to, like blood and guts or found footage scenarios. This film relies on the old fashioned haunted house scenario but upgrades it to a new level. All of these add up to create probably the best horror film in years.

“Insidious” tells the story of the Lambert family, headed by Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne). The Lamberts have just moved their clan, three kids in tow, to a new house. As they are getting settled, their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) goes exploring in the attic and has an accident. At that moment he is fine but when he goes to sleep that night, he does not wake up the next morning. The reason is because he has fallen into a deep coma. Three months later he is still in the coma but has been moved from the hospital back into the house. Not soon after that Renai begins to see strange things happening in the house. These things begin with hearing weird voices on the baby monitor to seeing ghosts suddenly appear in the bedrooms. After many disturbances Renai begs Josh to move away to another house. Well they do, but the spirits follow them to the new house. Desparate for help they seek the advice of a psychic named Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), along with her team of paranormal investigators, to find out the reason behind these disturbances. After investigating Elise informs Josh and Renai that it is not the house that is being haunted, but it is their son. The reason is because even though Dalton is in a coma, in his mind he is caught in this purgatorish realm called “The Further”. The spirits are wrestling each other for the chance to invade his physical body.

This film is directed by James Wan, who is no stranger to the horror genre. He made the very first Saw movie and a horror film called Dead Silence about evil ventriloquist dummies. He also directed the revenge thriller Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon. But the icing on the cake is that the producers of this movie are the makers of the Paranormal Activity movies like Oren Peli and Jason Blum. That right there is probably the best pairing for a horror movie. The director of Saw and the producers of Paranormal Activity . That is a great team.

This story echoes a lot of a movie from 1982 called Poltergeist . The haunted house scenario is played with a family in jeopardy. But yet this film stands on its own as a very unique and original horror film. What is even more surprisingly is that the MPAA giving this movie a PG-13 rating. If you ask me, there are enough scares and intense scenes to qualify this movie for a R rating. But when all is said and done this is a very hard PG-13 movie.

As stated before this movie is a true horror film. It is very unique in its own way and it is also very original. The bottom line is that this film gets its effectiveness by using the real tools that make a horror film scary. The scares in this film are very jumpy and the happen when you least expect them to. They all lead up to an ending that is very unexpected and also one that you will not forget. This film shows that you do not need to rely on senseless amounts of gore and even the found footage ways of inducing scares. This is probably the absolute best horror film that I have seen in a while. And believe me it has been a while. Once again this is a horror film that is unique and can stand up against some of the other junk that is out there.

By Adam Miller

Movies Correspondent and Associate Producer, The RPM Show

If you want to learn more about “Insidious” or any other movie, or what to share your thoughts, send me an email to adam@therpmshow.com. Also visit our website at www.therpmshow.com to learn more about anything in the world of entertainment.