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Insidious (2010)
Tags: (16 votes)
Rating #:
7/10
Director:
James Wan
Runtime:
103 minutes
Cast:
Patrick Wilson,
Rose Bryne,
Lin Shaye,
Ty Simpkin,
Barbara Hershey After the disappointing Dead Silence, director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell team up with the Paranormal Activity producers to deliver one of the more creative and genuinely creepy theatrical releases in years. Having said that, the film unfortunately loses a lot of its atmosphere and creepiness towards the end thanks to the fact that it
shows the audience entirely too much, losing its simplicity and resulting in a mish-mash of several scares and ideas thrown together with little effect.The story revolves around a young family that move into a new home, where one of the sons mysteriously falls into a coma and strange, seemingly paranormal incidents occur following the boy's comatose state. Thinking the house may be haunted, the wife attempts to confide in her husband, who
naturally shrugs it off. That is, until one night where the wife is attacked by a malevolent spirit, which also triggers a series of other events that convinces the family to finally GTFO.After moving into a new home, it's not long before they realize that the evil has followed them over to this new house, so they enlist the help of an old family friend/paranormal investigator to determine the cause and potential reasoning for all this madness. After a little walk around the house, the psychic reveals that their
comatose son is attracting evil and malicious spirits, who are using his body as a temporary gateway into our world.As I said earlier, Insidious has some genuinely creepy scenes in the first half, thanks to its simplicity and excellent use of sounds. One scene in particular that stands out for me involves a ghost overlooking the baby in its crib -- I definitely got some nice chills going in that scene. However, towards the end of the second half things start to fall apart. The audience is just given way too much at once, causing it to lose a lot of its chilling atmosphere, tension-building, and overall general creepy that was so prominent in the first half.
The problem mostly lies in the last 30-minutes when the father is forced to travel deep into the spirit world known as "The Further" in order to retrieve his boy. Although there were a few somewhat decent scenes, it just seemed like we viewers were shown way too much, especially when it came to the main demon that was looking to possess the boy. This said-demon was somewhat frightening in the bits and pieces we see of him, but by the end of the flick we're shown too much of him, which removed any remaining mystery or potential scares and spookiness the character could've had for the audience. This is especially a problem since the filmmakers decide to have this supposedly badass demonic spirit look like some kind of Darth Maul fanboy.
Despite losing a lot of tension and scares towards the end, Insidious still remains to be one of the better, more original and genuinely scary, recent horror films to hit the big screen. Definitely give this flick a look if you haven't already.
| Posted on July 15, 2011 - 8:19pm | FrighT MasteR |
Dates are tentative and subject to change.
- Fri, May 25, 2012 (VOD)
- Fri, May 25, 2012
- Fri, June 1, 2012
- Fri, June 1, 2012 (Limited)
- Fri, June 8, 2012
- Tue, June 12, 2012 (DVD)
- Tue, June 12, 2012 (DVD)
- Fri, June 22, 2012
- Tue, June 26, 2012 (DVD)
- Tue, July 10, 2012 (DVD)
- Fri, July 13, 2012
- Tue, July 24, 2012 (DVD)
- Fri, August 3, 2012 (VOD)
- Tue, August 14, 2012 (VOD)(DVD)
- Fri, August 17, 2012
- Fri, August 24, 2012
- Fri, August 31, 2012 (VOD)
- Fri, August 31, 2012
- Fri, September 14, 2012
- Fri, September 21, 2012
- Fri, September 28, 2012 (VOD)
- Fri, October 5, 2012
- Fri, October 19, 2012
- Fri, January 4, 2013
- Fri, January 11, 2013
- Fri, January 11, 2013
- Fri, February 1, 2013
- Fri, February 22, 2013
- Fri, March 15, 2013
- Fri, April 12, 2013
- Fri, June 21, 2013
- Fri, June 28, 2013
- Fri, July 12, 2013
- Fri, October 18, 2013
Before I sat down and watched this I kept hearing how terrifying it was and how I might scream until my throat goes raw but in all honesty, sitting down and watching it with all the hype Idk maybe hearing about how scary it was beforehand set a bar in my head because as I watched it I just kept thinking where are the scares? Besides the demon harrassing the baby which would terrify anyone with a heart, I too kept thinking everytime the demon popped it's head in Holy crap is this Darth Maul's dad/brother/uncle/etc LOL And would just laugh at him rather then hide or tremble so it was an ok movie not the scariest since the exorcist however.
The second part of the film was so bad. Honestly I was thinking "wtf". It ruined the movie for me.
i liked this movie. and a day removed from seeing it i like it even more. love the cheesy vibrato high-pitched violins. i agree with most of ya'll, the third act is a little tiresome, but the rest of the flick made up for it. the beginning and ending are great, and for the case of insidious they make it work despite its shortcomings.
i hate so many things about this kind of sub-genre but i consider this movie a damn near must-see for a horror fan. i also loathe pg13 horror, but again, this flick turned that notion on its head and forced me to love it.
and i understand the obvious poltergeist comparison. we live in the golden age of horror remakes. most of these remakes get plenty of (well deserved) criticism, but i don't think i would recommend anyone to rent a 30 year old movie rather than see a refreshing new one such as insidious. that is like accusing a band of ripping off the beatles. duh...only it isn't 1966. or 1982
o.k., how is this film original in any way? it reminded me of poltergiest, with the story focusing on the boy and dad rather than the mother and daughter. and i really don't see how this film was scary. and by the way they did the poster work for the movie i thought the kid was going to be like a demon possessed or something.i mean the film is ok, nothing really special. i did rather like the way it ended. and it seemed most of the movie was filmed in pitch black, my wife said it was hard to see. five out of ten, nothing more.
I couldnt disagree with Kupotek more. This is the best thing for Horror (along with Paranormal Activity) in years. I will always be a fan and pretty much see anything in horror, but for a dying Genre we needed these movies!!
Forget over analysing, or questioning things that dont need questioning. This movie was amazing!! I think most of the scares were down to perfect timing of the music. I mean we all knew there was gonna be a face there... whats so scary about a face?? But combined with the backing sounds, half the cinema wet there pants!!
If you like Horror then youve got it all here. And if you want to see more, drop the cool guy/girl
act and enjoy it for what it is. Instead of continuing to destroy the only damn genre i can bear to watch.
And hell!! At least its not in 3D!!!
I thought this was a great movie, one of the top films of the past few years. But it did have it's moments where I questioned it.
The movie starts out in somewhat homage fashion with a collection of epileptic violins... this was common amongst cheesy and low budget horror in the '70s in America, it didn't work for me then, and it certainly doesn't now... but I digress. Rose Byrne's been showing up everywhere lately, and good for her, she's a likeable actress.
Barbara Hershey is a legend, so I balance the good and bad and will not make judgment too quickly... bearing in mind the film was written by they who brought us the Saw series, to me that's not a plus, and the director of Paranormal Activity, which I do take as a plus, so instantly we're met with a bit of concern, but let us venture in... and see which elements win out in the end, in my cutting review of INSIDIOUS.
The movie has some decent camera work and directing thanks to Oren Peli...some unique little gimmicks, but there is much left wanting in this movie. The mother's role was poorly written and directed.
Insidious had a few scary moments, the problem is the movie had far too many jump out at you and vanish moments that it never kept up the mood or tension long enough to really be scared.
I enjoyed a lot of the atmosphere at least conceptually, but there was nothing to make you wonder how a kid could accidentally get to the further, perhaps if they showed him wandering through different wonderful alternate realities, to really draw the viewer into the whole astral experience, make him flying with dragons and then see he himself is one, then zooming through another window of the house to another reality, until he accidentally finds himself in the further, perhaps...
This kind of care and attention and development was utterly missing from the film, and that was a huge disapointment.
A demon that looks like Darth Maul is pretty silly, and not enough creepy things happen in the house, just a lot of noise and jump scares that go nowhere.
The cheap effects didn't bother me, I'm not an addict for CGI and effects, I'm more interested in a solid story, development of characters, history of what's going on, a memorable soundtrack and acting, etc... but alas, the things that matter to me were largely missing from the film... not enough to make it unlikeable, it was decent, but not great.
In the end, one is left with questions that would need to be addressed, such as who was the woman haunting the father all these years? And where did the demon go in the end? And how was the ghost woman able to possess him when she wasn't able to so long ago even though she got so close to him so easily before?
How did the boy put tons of creepy drawings up on the wall while he was in a coma? They weren't up before the coma.
How was the budget for this only 1.5 million with a cast of Barbara Hershey, Lina Shaye, Rose Byrne and tons of extras and effects?
A sequel would have to answer these questions and hopefully address my concerns, because it has potential, but the script was an absolute mess.
None of the actors had any chemistry, lady hears yelling demon in her house, so what does she do? Nothing, she just chills out and acts like nothing happened, wtf?
So many red herrings, broken step, furnace in attic, sheet music disappearing, nothing furthered the plot in any way.
This movie had a very sloppy script, and no interesting soundtrack...
Watch Poltergeist, it was made in 1982 and blows this movie away. I will be staying away from any movie written by Leigh Whannell in the future, this guy's a hack, and his writing is for sh!t.
My Rating: 6/10
Lmao, I've seen Poltergeist, and even thought it was good, it wasn't scary at all, although, no movie is scary, and I actually laughed a few times while watching it.
Anyways...
They explain how he goes into the further. It's not that he just randomly pops up there, it's that he was wandering around aimlessly, too young to understand that he's not dreaming but instead having an "out of body experience", and wanders too far into that other world and ends up entering The Further. And, this IS a supernatural HORROR movie, not some crazy fantasy movie, there wouldn't be any dragons.
Everyone keeps saying that the demon looks like Darth Maul, and, I do agree, but to an extent. He's not all black and red like Maul, his face and tail, according to my memory, are the only things that have red on them. There were clear differences between the two.
There wasn't an intense amount of CGI for it to hurt the film. And nowadays, movies just aren't long enough to have huge character development and whatnot. With 85-120min long movies, do you really expect people to stuff all of that history, character development, and huge story together with the rest of the film and have it not a big messy, confusing, situation? These days they want to just cut to the chase and let people see the movie, enjoy the movie, and then go back to doing everyday things. Roller coasters don't last hours. A whole amusement park would, but that would consist of several roller coasters.
"In the end, one is left with questions that would need to be addressed, such as who was the woman haunting the father all these years? And where did the demon go in the end? And how was the ghost woman able to possess him when she wasn't able to so long ago even though she got so close to him so easily before?
1. Good question, that would need a prequel.
2. Back to what he was doing before the son went into The Further, without the empty body of the boy, he has no way of getting out until someone else goes back in.
3. How couldn't she possess him years ago? I'm not sure. How was she able to possess him this time? Again, not sure, but that was kind of the point. To leave you guessing. Think of your own reasons and ways she could have done so. It's called a cliffhanger.
How did the boy put tons of creepy drawings up on the wall while he was in a coma? They weren't up before the coma.
They don't really directly answer that, but they do mention that he gets up and walks around, even though he was unconscious. And it wasn't a coma, which was also stated.
How was the budget for this only 1.5 million with a cast of Barbara Hershey, Lina Shaye, Rose Byrne and tons of extras and effects?"
HOW was the budget 1.5mil? Well, not every actor gets payed 2mil for every movie they do. And I thought you didn't care for effects, lol. Effects CAN be expensive, but most of the effects were easily achievable and cheap, like you stated earlier. Cheap effects and actors that don't need a big pay, that's why the budget was "only" 1.5mil.
The script indeed wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst. I'm guessing your the kind of person who avoids B-movies. But even some high budget, high paying actor filled movies have horrid scripts, worse than Insidious's. Jump scares aren't that "scary", but they are fun. Unless you're one of those people who hate surprises. If you're looking for that movie that keeps you up all night, good luck. I've been looking for that movie myself and so far, not so good. If you want a movie that is creepy but isn't filled with jump scares, check out Black Swan.
Insidious was quite good compared to the crap the rest of Holeywood is spewing out of their asses as of late. Decent is better that shit. Don't go into any movie expecting it to be the best, go into expecting to have fun. No fun? No movie. If Insidious wasn't fun enough for you, keep looking for one that is. I just hope you didn't see it in theaters, you would have wasted an extra 10 or 11 bucks when you could have rented it from Redbox for $1. Lol.
congrats for having the worst breakdown i've read in over 5 years of UHM. you either didn't watch the flick, or didn't understand it. probably both.