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.
No comments:
Post a Comment