Insidious [2011]

A family moves into a new house – and suddenly their son is in a coma and the wife sees a bunch of creepy people all around who menace her newborn and attack her – but when she calls for hubby’s help – they’re gone! So, they move – and it keeps happening!! What’s going on here?

After a certain amount of dropping piano sounds and screams – I became apathetic to the whole movie. It wasn’t a bad movie – it just relied too much on those aspects to get scares – when I thought it was doing a fine job building suspense on its own – it didn’t need to result to cheap tactics.

The movie reminded me a lot of the atmosphere that the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies were trying to build (and it’s from the makers of – so it makes sense) – with the calm eeriness – then something happens that grips your throat and you’re instantly freaked out. Instead of allowing that air it self out though they threw in a loud bang sound effect – which I honestly couldn’t tell if they wanted you to believe that it was coming from inside the house or from the soundtrack.

I also felt the filmmakers almost intended to make a simple haunted house movie by the way they introduced the books falling off the shelf while everyone was in the kitchen eating breakfast in the beginning. If you’ve seen the movie and know the “twists” – then you’ll know how this scene doesn’t make any sense – unless it’s JUST the house. I guess they will leave those answers to the eventual sequel.

The ending was a shame – there’s a lot of horror movies that end the exact same way – and I would’ve just liked to see the opposite because I felt that would’ve made for a BETTER twist.

Again, it wasn’t a bad film – there were some redeeming qualities – such as the reliance of the idea of what is left unseen. I’m not sure if it was intended as part of the freaky nature – but the relation of where things/people were in relation to each other was left me confused and it brought me into the story a bit because it wasn’t set in a way that I could immediately identify. I tend to think it was a bit of bad filmmaking but it worked for me.

From the advertisements I saw – it was pimped as being from the ‘makers of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY’ – even if it was directed by the creator of the SAW franchise. So, when the SAW puppet made a blatant cameo I felt that was a dick length scene – the “I’ve spawned more sequels and I was on the scene before you PARANORMAL ACTIVITY guy” – because I CAN’T see the point of having that puppet drawn on the chalk board in hubby’s classroom. No point – other than Ego of the director. It’s fine if you want to work the puppet in – but making that blatant? There’s a lot of moving boxes – couldn’t the puppet be somewhere in the background half hidden by boxes? No... Let’s essentially turn a scene where we’re supposed to concentrate on the lead character having a phone conversation – and put a drawing of the puppet over his shoulder the entire time!

The film isn’t bad – but it’s just above average for me – you’ll get for the most part what you expect from it.