I had an opportunity to see a preview screening of Insidious a few weeks ago, but unfortunately was unable to attend. This was doubly painful because producer-writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan were supposed to be there, and I’d have liked to ask a few questions. Such as: doesn’t anyone have any new ideas anymore? Did you enjoy Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror and Paranormal Activity so much that you felt compelled to pay tribute to these films by borrowing large chunks of their plots? (I suppose Paranormal Activity was a logical choice as an inspiration, since that film’s producer-director-writer also co-produced Insidious). I’m also curious if Wan and Whannell ever saw The Devil Commands (1941), since one scene in Insidious (in which a ghostbuster-medium wears a sort of gas mask as she communicates with the great beyond) is rather reminiscent of one of the eeriest sequences in the earlier movie. Oh, and Mexico’s El mundo de los muertos (1969)—ever see that? Just asking…
Insidious features yet another young, upwardly-mobile family (teacher husband Josh, composer wife Renai, three young children) in an amazing house they probably shouldn’t be able to afford. Surprise, it’s not an underwater home mortgage that blights their abode, it’s a pesky poltergeist or something who opens locked doors (setting off the alarm system, how annoying), hides books, and so forth. Oldest child Dalton (Dalton!) is imaginative (a bad sign) and takes a tumble in the attic; he falls into a coma which has medical science baffled. Baffled, I tells ya! More bumps and thumps and lurking ghostly figures and—for a change—the family does the logical thing and moves out. Finally, people in a horror film who don’t act like complete idiots when confronted with perplexing and possibly dangerous phenomena.
But as luck would have it, “it’s not the house that’s haunted…it’s your son,” says helpful ghostbuster Elise. Seems Dalton’s astral body goes wandering about the cosmos while he’s asleep, and this time he’s blundered into “The Further,” as Elise has dubbed the purgatory of lost souls—and he can’t get out. Now, all manner of evil spirits are lurking about, hoping to inhabit Dalton’s unoccupied corpus. Dalton’s dad Josh had the ability to astral-project as a boy, so he has to venture into The Further to retrieve his errant son before it’s…too late.
Insidious isn’t a badly-made film, and I confess it did get one BIG jump out of me, and legitimately, too (that is, not a false-scare caused by a loud noise or something), but I was put off by how familiar everything seemed. Husband doesn’t believe wife’s tale of odd things occurring in the house? Check. Husband sends away ghostbuster brought in by his wife? Check. Child lost in another dimension, calling for parents? Check. Screams, lights go out, furniture over-turned? Check. Child possessed by a demon? Check. Combination of science and the supernatural, neither one especially satisfying? Check. Last-second “kicker”? Check.
Furthermore, fully half of the running time of Insidious is utilised just setting up the premise of “Dalton gets stuck in the dark dimension.” At this point, the focus of the film suddenly goes from “haunted house hijinks” to “rescue quest,” cutting off the first and short-changing the latter. Josh’s visit to The Further is confusing (what’s with the waxworks-like Fifties Family?) and low-budget (admittedly, Insidious looks pretty darn good for a budget of under $2 million, but the lack of resources really shows in these climactic scenes, which are basically just dark and might as well have been shot in a warehouse or your grandmother’s basement; plus, the painted-face demons and white-faced ghosts aren’t exactly world-class effects, either). Of course, having a low budget doesn’t have to mean “no imagination,” but Insidious seems content to recycle a threadbare narrative with the least effort possible.
As a disposable, “let’s go to the cinema and shriek a bit when we’re surprised (vs. frightened)” bit of entertainment, Insidious is adequate and inoffensive fun, and audiences seem to agree, as it’s reaping large baskets of cash at the box-office (on a miniscule investment, as noted above). It’s not insulting to the viewer—no last-minute “twist” which makes little sense (I’m looking at you, The Last Exorcism) and delivers a fair number of shocks, spread evenly over the the running time rather than turning out to be all show and no go (Paranormal Activity I and II, are you listening?). So I can’t call this bad, or even a waste of time and money. But this is by no means a seriously “scary,” imaginative, or even especially well-made film.
