Retro Review: Insidious

Writer's Note: In honor of writer/director/producer James Wan's birthday, here's a look back at the first installment of his hit franchise Insidious. This article was originally published in UAB's Kaleidoscope on April 3rd, 2011. 

Yay! A horror movie that doesn’t suck! And an original one at that- no remakes here. Insidious is the latest effort from the team behind the first Saw film, director James Wan and writer/co-star Leigh Wannell, but thankfully, it is far from the realm of the infamous “torture porn” genre. 


Instead, what we have here is a more-or-less old-fashioned ghost story that plays a bit like Paranormal Activity with a budget, with elements of classic spook stories like Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror thrown in for good measure. It’s a PG-13 film, but it’s not the kind of film that really needed to be an R anyway. Instead, it thrills by both subverting the rules of the genre and adhering to them where it counts most.  

The plot revolves around a family of five who have just moved into a new house. The father, Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) is a school teacher, and mom Renai (Rose Byrne) is a musician, and they are joined by an infant and two young boys, Dalton and Foster. One day, Foster takes a tumble, and shortly thereafter, lapses into a coma. Or does he? Mom thinks the house may be haunted, but is it? Or is something else entirely going on here? 

Well, if you’ve seen the trailer, you know that it’s the latter. The realities of the situation won’t surprise fans of Poltergeist, but I dug the way it was handled here. If you’ve ever wanted to see one of those bozos like the Ghost Hunters or Paranormal Academy or what have you actually find what they were looking for with their wacky equipment and have the crap scared out of them, then this is the movie for you. (Screenwriter Wannell actually plays one of the would-be ghostbusters- you might also recall him cropping up as one of the victims in Saw.) 

The film does a pretty good job of skirting certain things that aren’t supposed to happen in most horror movies. For instance, the notion that everything spooky and ghost-related can only be seen in the dark. There are a number of sequences that take place in broad daylight that are pretty darn spooky, and I like that the film offers us a great and wide-ranging array of freaky stuff. If the creepy kid bit doesn’t do it for you, there’s also a creepy old lady, a psychopathic 50’s housewife type and her murdered family, a scary long-haired hippie type, and even a demonic creature.  

Granted, if you don't particularly find these sorts of things scary, you might find yourself giggling a bit- as I almost did when I saw that the demon resembles Darth Maul from the Star Wars series. Really, though, there is enough patently spooky stuff going on here that I can’t imagine that most people won’t be weirded out by at least a few things. The film really has its bases covered, and in a smart way. 

Horror fans will be thrilled to see cult fave Lin Shaye (A Nightmare on Elm Street, the 2001 Maniacs series) get a juicy role that really allows her to show off her acting chops in earnest. She plays the requisite medium, a la Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist, and knocks it out of the park.   

Also very good is Byrne, best known for her role on TV’s Damages. She really goes a long way towards selling the material, and your heart goes out to her in her quest to save her son, as it does for co-star Wilson in the film’s second half, when we realize there’s more than meets the eye with him as well. 

Barbara Hershey, hot off of Black Swan-and also the victim of her own haunting in the underrated film The Entity- turns in a solid supporting role as Josh’s mother, who may know more about what’s going on than she lets on.  

I must say, I really loved the film, and I certainly had my doubts going in. As clever as the original Saw was, it still seemed like Wannell was a bit of a one-trick pony, particularly after the drubbing critics and horror fans alike gave his last film, Dead Silence. This is definitely a return to form, and all the better in that it is in a completely different sub-genre than the Saw series.


The scares here are subtle compared to that film series, even while they go over the top in other areas, such as the near-Lynchian post-modern usage of the song “Tip Toe through the Tulips” and especially in the wonderfully bonkers finale, which does indeed leave the proceedings open to another chapter- but, of course. 

Insidious may not re-invent the wheel or anything, but it’s not trying to. If anything, it just goes a long way towards confirming that there’s life in those tires yet. And did I mention it’s an original concept, not a remake or a sequel? Nothing wrong with that, and Wannell and Co. prove that the well hasn’t run dry just yet. True to its name, Insidious really gets under your skin. 

Flashback Friday: Fatal Games

Never mind the Winter Olympics... it's the Fatal Games! 

Okay, so I couldn't find a horror movie version of the Olympics- someone should get on that- but I did find something in the general ball park: this 1984 movie, which deals with would-be Olympic contenders that find their dreams thwarted by... murder!

In the lesser-known Fatal Games, aka Olympic Nightmare, a group of Olympic hopefuls competing at the U.S. Regionals at Falcon Academy in Massachusetts find their best (if not necessarily their brightest) taken out one-by-one by a javelin-wielding killer in a track suit, who apparently wants to wipe out the competition. But who is it? And is that their real motive? 

Fatal Games is one of the many assembly-line slasher flicks that came out in the 80's and, TBH, doesn't have a whole lot to offer, in terms of originality, and yet... I kinda enjoyed it in spite of myself. For one thing, I'd never seen it before, and I've seen MANY a slasher movie in my misspent youth, let me tell you.  

The slasher movie was the entry point for me into horror, for the most part, and I was absolutely one of those people that would walk into a video-rental store and just randomly pick a horror movie out by virtue of a cool title or tawdry cover.  

To this day, I miss that experience, even though the likes of Netflix has made it to where one doesn't even have to leave the couch to have the entire contents of any given video-rental place at one's fingertips.  

                                   Pictured: how much a lot of Netflix's content sucks.

Yeah, it's more convenient, to be sure, but I kind of miss the communal aspect of it- interacting with other renters, finding a kindred spirit amongst the horror section, also looking for that elusive diamond in the rough. Fatal Games isn't that, but it does bring back memories of when a few creative kills and a little gratuitous nudity was all a guy needed for a fun time at the movies.  

                                            Seems legit.

Fatal Games does have a few things going for it, though. For one, it has one of my fave features for a horror flick- the memorably cheesy theme song. In this case, it's "Take It All the Way," a primo slice of cheddar, written by Shuki Levy, best-known for writing music for children's shows in the 80's and 90's, including the Masters of the Universe animated franchises, Power Rangers and a whole lot of the animated superhero line-ups of the time. 

If this particular tune puts you in the mind of the immortal "You're the Best," by Joe Esposito, well, guess what? Levy also composed the music for the animated series based on that movie, too, as well as the score for this movie, which features a memorable stalk-'n'-slash killer's theme and a pounding, tense track for the final sequence. 

                   Deborah Shelton- seen here about to "Take It All the Way."

In an interesting side note, "Take It" was co-written by Levy's then-wife Deborah Shelton, who, while best-known for the original version of Dallas, is better-known to horror fans for the likes of Blood Tide and Body Double. (She also did a lot of Skinemax-type films, but we won't go there.) 

                                 Sally Kirkland- Seen here about to take it a different way.

Speaking of Skinemax, the film also stars Sally Kirkland, who did her fair share of that sort of thing her own damn self, though, fortunately for her, mere years later after this dubious film, she managed to get herself nominated for an Oscar in 1987 for the movie Anna.

  

Alas, the big break didn't last, and like many actors before and after her, a string of dubious choices led to her being relegated to B-Movie status in no time. Who says the Oscar curse isn't real?

Still, she had a good run up until then, including roles in the likes of The Sting, A Star is Born, Private Benjamin and The Way We Were. B-Movie fans probably know her best for films like Crazy Mama (a Corman-produced flick directed by a young Jonathan Demme), Human Highway (starring and co-directed by rocker Neil Young and featuring Devo!), the martial-arts-themed Best of the Best, High Stakes (featuring a young Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the "Black Cat" segment of Two Evil Eyes directed by the legendary Dario Argento. 

Kirkland plays a school nurse here, working for the mad-scientist type, Dr. Jordine, played by the writer/director himself, Michael Elliot, whose career was decidedly short-lived, with only one more credit to his name on IMDB, for rewriting the screenplay for the Donald Pleasance /Dean Stockwell vehicle To Kill a Stranger. 

Credit where credit's due, though, for being prescient enough to foresee the then-upcoming doping scandals that would later rock the Olympics with his doctor character's "special mix" of drugs meant to boost the athlete's performances.  

There's a great, hilarious scene where Kirkland character rails against the not-so-good-doctor against his dubious practices: "They're kids! Not guinea pigs!" Lol- tough words, given what happens later in the film.  

Though the production values are obviously low here, the cinematographer has some good ideas- note the underwater scenes and the various shots of the killer stalking, especially the back-lit one when he goes to attack the black athlete in the sauna- but alas, the lighting is oft-terrible, and there are times you can hardly see anything.  

To be fair, though, the film has never had an official DVD release, much less a Blu-Ray one, so I was stuck with a grainy VHS copy, which doesn't exactly help the film's case. (You can watch it on YouTube at the time of this article's writing.) Given the number of crappy slashers that have gotten the Gold Medal treatment, I don't think it would be beyond the pale for one with an Oscar-nominated actress in it to get an upgrade.  

As for the rest of the cast, it's pretty much amateur-hour, but that's to be expected for an obscure flick like this. In my research, I dutifully looked everyone up, and found a few semi-familiar faces, though.  

There's Sean Masterson, who plays Phil Dandridge, who went onto to a healthy career, mostly on TV, in shows like HBO's underrated Dream On, as well as guest stints on Friends, Melrose Place and 3rd Rock from the Sun, plus roles in Wag the Dog and the TV-movie cult favorite High School USA. 

Michael O'Leary, who played Frank Agee, had a recurring role as Dr. Rick Bauer on the soap Guiding Light from 1983-2009, when the show ended.  

Actress Teal Roberts, who played Lynn Fox, cropped up in Beverly Hills Cop II and The Last Boy Scout, as well as the Skinemax favorite Hardbodies. 

Spice-Williams Crosby, who played Coach Drew, went on to become a highly-respected stunt woman in films like the The Lost Boys and Batman Returns, but continued to act as well, including roles in Star Trek V and the cult favorite The Guyver, alongside Mark Hamill... and Jimmie "Dyno-mite" Walker! 

Melissa Prophet, who played Nancy Wilson (NOT the Heart singer, lol), appeared in both Marin Scorsese's classic  Goodfellas and Casino- not too shabby there- but her career sadly fizzled after that. 

Nicholas Love cropped up in the horror favorite The Boogeyman (the 1980 version), alongside sister Suzanna, in the crime-thrillers Jennifer 8 (with Uma Thurman) and The Dead Pool (with Clint Eastwood), plus both David Lynch's Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks. 

Finally, there's character actor Ed Call, who played Mr. Burger, who was all over TV in the 70's and 80's, and also cropped up in Walking Tall, Dark Night of the Scarecrow  and A Nightmare on Elm Street.   

After that, it's pretty much unknowns, though if you look quick, you can see scream queens supreme Linnea Quigley (as one of the athletes) and Brinke Stevens (as one of the shower girls). Quigley was, of course, in the similar  Graduation Day, which also features athletes meeting an untimely demise. 

Fatal Games isn't great, but it has its moments, including some LOL dialogue (one character makes a crack about a gymnast getting "athletic" on a male's "uneven bar") and bad acting abounds, which is always fun, and some of those physics-defying javelin throws are something! Also, how the hell does the killer get up on the roof so fast in the ending sequence?!! 

I suppose some SJW-types won't care for some of the more un-PC moments, like Kirkland's character playing grab-ass (literally) with one of the athletes or the big twist reveal about the killer at the end, which is too ludicrous to be offensive, really, but I can't imagine they would be watching something like this in the first place, so there you go.  

All others, if you like this sort of thing, you could do a lot worse. It's got all the hallmarks of a fun, classic slasher: the synth-drenched score, the fun theme song, the "Whodunit?" element, the Kill Bill-style "cross off the list as I kill" thing, nutty murders, and a WTF finale. What more could you ask for- especially if you're a fan of this sort of thing?