Insidious

I think I read something about Insidious a couple months ago and that it was a legit scary movie about a haunted house. The "legit scary movie" part interested me, but also kept me from watching it the last week because I had to build up my courage. Starring Rose Byrne who was Helen from Bridesmaids, and Patrick Wilson, who was the love interest from Morning Glory and The Switch.

So, the first half of the movie is about this family: mom, dad, and three kids. They seem like a normal enough family, until the mom starts seeing things in their new home. You know, the pretty standard creepy sounds (bonus points for scary static sounds through the baby monitor), flashes of ghosty people, you know, pretty much your standard haunting. Things take a different turn when one of the kids doesn't wake up one morning; he's in a coma for no apparent reason.

The second half consists of them finding out what this haunting and coma is all about and trying to fix it. I will leave the plot synopsis at that to avoid spoilers.

I will admit my scary movie bias here: I find the more a movie relies on scary sounds and things jumping out, or walking sneakily in the background for scares, the less legit of a scary movie I find it to be. The first half of the movie relied a lot on this sort of stuff, but it was still kind of creepy mostly because I think the family seemed so normal. There is a scene at the beginning where the mom is making breakfast for screaming kids while on the phone with some automated company while the dad is upstairs quietly brushing his teeth. This, I'm sure, is a familiar family scene for many, and I think the fact the movie takes the time to establish the normality and relatability of this family makes what later happens to them a little scarier.

When what is happening is given a name during the second half, and we know what's what, I kind of breathed a sign of relief, kind of like the unknown was scarier than what it turned out to be. The second half was more interesting than scary, I was intrigued to see where things would lead. What started out as a kind of normal-family-in-a-supernatural-situation turned into a little bit of cheese and camp. I always thought Tim Tiny's version of "Tip-toe through the Tulips" was hilarious, but after watching Insidious, it will only ever be creepy to me.

Not much new here, but it's a solid horror that keeps unnecessary gore and violence to a minimum and adds enough new stuff to the horror movie formula to keep it interesting.


...so I was just looking for the poster of this movie to put with this post and thought I would mention how ridiculous I thought the poster is. I thought demon kids ran their course with The Ring, and the kid in this movie is in a coma for the large majority of this movie anyways. Silly.