JAMES WAN IS BACK! After his auspicious and marvelous debut film SAW he floundered with his last two outings, Dead Silence and Death Sentence.  What’s interesting is how SAW gets shoehorned in as a horror flick but watching it a second time recently, it teeters on that edge of horror and thriller and isn’t enough to fully be considered one or the other.  So it makes sense that James would be conflicted with his next two follow-ups. With Dead Silence he went straight for the horror genre and with Death Sentence, the thriller. Neither of them really worked.  Now, with his fourth film, he is firmly in the horror zone and the result is staggeringly effective.

 

INSIDIOUS IS A HORROR DE FORCE.

 

You should probably know next to nothing going in, in fact if you have any interest in seeing the movie don’t even read this until you’ve returned home and cleaned yourself after soiling your pants (Nothing against people who read AIBN with soiled pants….hey it happens).

 

 

OK so you got your clean pants on? Ready for me to make ’em dirty again with this review? Well alright lets GOooooooooooO!

Not really. I’m not going to dive into plot. Its simple– family moves into a new house, kid is fucking around in the attic when he slips and falls into a coma…..or something very comaesque, then weird shit stars to go DOWN.  The movie opens with all these nice shots of the house with a few strange goings-on here and there– a foot print, a door opening by itself, etc. The creators obviously know that they are going to have to shed their Paranormal Activity skin right away.  At least they acknowledge that it’s there and yes the movie has a lot of similarities, but it is by no means a cheap knock off or redo/remake.  In some manner it feels like a quasi third film of the trilogy.  With the Paranormal Activity creator’s name in the credits (Oren Peli) you wonder why they would delve into such a similar story.  It feels like Oren challenged Saw writer and star (also appearing in this as well as writing) Leigh Whannell to create his own version of Paranormal Activity.  In the end it works great. I loved the story and idea. I saw the winks and nods to haunted house movies of the past, but this felt fresh and its just a very well made film.

 

 

The biggest difference between the Paranormal Activities and this come down to the style of scare.  While the Pas utilize the eerie atmosphere and slow build, Insidious wants to FORCE YOU TO BE SCARED. I mean that in the nicest sense, the movie is a jump-scare-a-minute, but it never felt repetitive, even when you saw the scares coming a mile away, they were still effective.  I think a lot of this has to do with the uniqueness of its trailer campaign.  The trailer for the movie is almost too smart for the movie being sold, which I personally liked– though I don’t think it was the greatest way to put asses in seats.  I applaud them for saving all the penis for the movie.  Even the one big jump you KNOW is going to happen, that shot of Darth Maul behind Night Owl, when it happens…..PANTS WILL BE SHIT.

Its funny to think about Wan’s career thus far in terms of budget. Saw cost around a million dollars and spawned the billion dollar franchise.  So of course he’s going to get cash thrown at him for his next film Dead Silence. 20 million is what the reports say for it, and that movie just didn’t work.  It was like since THEY HAD THE MONEY they could indulge in every whim and show everything.  I adhere to the idea that in order for a movie to be truly scary you can’t show everything, it takes away too much of the mystery. Also I believe great horror is usually achieved with no budget, because it forces the creative team to really deal with the constraints, and limits their showiness. The key to Wan’s success is a small budget.

 

 

Now, with two great ones under his belt, and Insidious costing less than Paranormal Activity 2, he is once again on his way to becoming a Master of Horror. Incredibly, Insidious’ greatest strength is the technical skill on display. For a million dollar film, it looks fantastic.  A lot of that came down to the house they picked, but the demons look great and the camera work, as in all of Wan’s work is very interesting and effective. The two leads, Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne are almost too good to be in some silly ghost house thrill ride. The tense score is the STUFF OF NIGHTMARES.  Even the silly Ghostbuster gang that comes in to help the couple figure out what’s wrong, initially seems to threaten the fairly serious tone, but ends up adding to the overall fun in the end.  Wan made interesting choices, and in the end, Insidious doesn’t have a single false note in it.

Finally, it was nice to see Barbara Hershey as the caring mother in a GOOD horror film for once.

 

*****FINAL THOUGHT: I love this continued streak of great uses of the one FUCK allowance in these PG-13 films.