A first time spin, I picked up ‘Insidious’ during a sale a few months ago, pretty much as a blind buy, with the only knowledge I had for the movie being that it was a ‘paranormal’ film, and that several of my ‘non filmie’ friends said it was a solid horror film that they would recommend. Im always trying to broaden my horror horizons, as I am a bit patchy on 2010’s/2020’s horror. So, I took a punt. Having seen it now; I didnt really *love* it, but I will admit it has its moments.
The plot follows the ‘Lambert’ family as they’ve just moved into a new house, Father, Josh; is a school teacher and Renai is a muscian and they have two young boys and a baby. With Josh working away from the home, Renai picks up most of the housework and parenting side of things, its tough, but the pair are hoping for a fresh start after the last place they lived in had an ‘incident’ occur that the family are hoping to move on from.
However, it doesnt take long for Renai to start feeling a bit uncomfortable in the new place, and after one of their sons, Dalton falls off a ladder, he appears to drift into a coma. Obviously the family are horrified, and after 3 months of observations, to which the doctors have no answers, the Lamberts bring their son home and set him up for long term care at the house.
But in doing so, something…’Insidious’ (Eh…Ehhhhhh?!?) starts to stalk the Lambert family, Renai begins to see beings in the corner of her eye, and as time goes on they become more and more prominent, eventually trashing up their house, and eerily stalking their other kids and Dalton…this bothers Renai so much that she manages to convince Josh to pack up and move to a new house…Which is probably THE most sensible thing i’ve EVER seen in a horror film.
But its no good! as on arriving in the new house the beings continue, and a TERRIFYING encounter with a red faced demon looking fellow, has Renai contact Joshes mother, who in turn contacts a paramormalist ‘Elise’ and her team. Who reveal to her the terrifying REAL reason Daltons in a coma…
One thing that I absolutely cannot abide about more contemporary horror is the normalisation of the ‘Jump Scare’ as the primary horror tactic. Back in the good old days of horror, Jumpscares were a fleeting tool in the horror filmakers arsenal. a quick, cheap and dirty way to get a couple extra scares in while working with subtext, metaphores and deeply uncomfortable imagery to create a well balanced horror feature. But as we entered the mid 90s, jumpscares became more and more overused…to the point that today, entire film FRANCHISES, are almost entirely reliant around the Jumpscare as the SOLE meathod for scaring people in a horror film. Insidious; is ONE of those movies.
Its film that solely relies on jumpscares to be the horror, theres almost no unsettling imagery, no real subtext or meat on the bones, nothing to really grip onto to make me sit up and take notice about this feature. Its just jumpscares intercut with lore dropping, and I could not have been more bored. Jumpscares dont really do anything for me, they just make me a bit stressed while I wait for them to happen, and I rarely if ever want to go watch a movie to be mildly stressed out. So right off the bat the film really didnt win any favours for me.
Compounding the issue further, it takes an absolute AGE to get going, I lost track of time unfortunately, but I reckon it must have been at LEAST 30 minutes of the hour and 40 runtime before we really saw anything even remotely CLOSE to horror. everything up to that point was just a mum doing chores, a dad going to work and kids hanging out and doing kids stuff, and while admittedly, I will say that by the hour mark the film was finally in full swing and doing its thing, and the pace almost certainly did pick up quite a bit from there, it really did try my patience to the point I nearly lost all interest in the film.
The scripts plot is fine enough, for a film that predates ‘The Conjuring’ by 3 years it seems to pretty much establish the template that that series would work off of for the next 10 years. I thought the ending was predictable, but about as satisfying as could be expected, once it did get going around the halfway point, I had a fine enough time, and as mentioned there are a few moments here that, as a long time horror watcher, did pleasently surprise me, because it made me feel like the characters were a bit more realistic than most.
Unfortunately; the act structuring does struggle a bit. with a glacial first act giving way to a half and half ‘interesting’ to ‘filler’ mixture…and the 3rd act pulling out all the stops, ultimately delivering a fine enough time…but your milage may vary if you can put up with the wait to get there.
Tonally; it felt a bit murky, like the comic relief parnomal assistants to Elise felt a bit forced, which I didnt enjoy, and it doesnt really seem to know how hard it really wants to go as a horror, or what kind of contrast it wants to play against those darker moments…While I appreciate the attempt at making things creepy by playing ‘tiptoe thru the tulips’ intermittently to try and create a sense of unease. As someone who grew up with that song being a mid to late 60s novelty record, I wasnt so much creeped out, more cracking out into laughter whenever it was played because…Is this what kids think is ‘super old and creepy’? I just thought it was more bizarre than anything else.
The characters are all pretty well written, I thought there was a nice complexity with the core cast, and the dialogue was quite naturalistic for the most part. It was probably the thing that kept me hanging on the most for the production.
The direction and cine are both above board, this is a studio picture, so certain standards had to be adhered to…So nothing too nefarious is present here. The film plays with a strong aesthetic, very angular and interested in the grading, with some shots looking almost black and white, but in fact are just very carefully curated set spaces with experimental lighting applied. the use of CG here is sparingly paced out. But its a 15 year old movie at this point, and even on bluray its starting to creak a little bit when it does happen.
I kind of felt what CG they did use was a bit unecissary honestly. This film suffers a bit from what I dub ‘Hellraiser’ syndrome, a cinematic condition where; The more you learn about the big scary baddies, the less big and scary and mysterious they seem and the more silly and rubbish they become. The oversharing of the ‘baddies’ in this film combined with the less than steller CG ultimately totally defanged these antagonists…by the end I was giggling more than I was paying attention.
Sequences are incredibly well composed however, the edit is rock solid, theres some really nice cine experimentation present in this film, that I thought was quite impressive honestly; its a pretty good looking film for the most part, that I think still largely holds up visually.
Performance wise, well, I wont go into the kid actors, but the trio of Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne and Lin Shaye are fabulous here, giving largely believable performances with great physical presence and pretty solid natural delivery. Yes they do have some stupid moments that feel stiff and awkward. But mercifully they are few and far between and dont totally ruin the films ‘vibe’.
And finally, the soundtrack! Which is deafening. This is another problem a lot of films from the mid 2000’s to the present day suffer with, the mixing is frankly painful. The score here is string,synth and other sharp noises, mixed up to 11. and those stings when the jumpscares happen are frankly deafening, especially when there are prolonged periods of absolute silence. Its the kind of loudness that, if you saw it in a theatre environment, would likely make you go temporarily visually impared (A feat i’ve experience only once before when I went to see ‘Evil Dead Rise’…THAT…was an experience…) But this? this is a bit annoying, and meant I basically had to rock the volume button my TV because every 5 minutes it would hit a sting that would make my cat explode.
Insidious has some pretty great ideas peppered into its 104 minute runtime. Its a visually impressive film for the most part with some solid performances and clear directoral vision. Unfortunately; it takes WAY too long to get to the good stuff, the digital effects havent aged all that well and it’s only using one tool to try and get the job done…and its using it badly.
If I was at a friends house, or if my partner wanted to watch this film again, I wouldnt put up any protest, but would I choose of my own volition to watch this thing again? Probably not…it was a nice idea, and I dont regret watching it. But I wouldnt choose to watch it again. I think if your into 2010’s horror, you’ll get on with this…but if your not…be prepared for a trek.
TYTD Reviews 