Insidious (2011)

Just before the house lights dimmed and Insidious began, a man sitting behind me said to his female companion, “Where’d they get that title? I don’t even know what ‘insidious’ means.” I didn’t hear any response from the woman. Note to filmmakers: Don’t title your movie with a word that your target demographic doesn’t understand. Besides, this movie was written and directed by the guys who made Saw–perhaps they didn’t learn from their own experience.

For the record, the dictionary defines “insidious” as “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects; treacherous.” That pretty much defines this movie, too. Well, except for the subtle part. Honestly, how subtle can a movie be when the opening title is displayed in giant letters, spanning nearly the entire height and width of the screen like it’s the beginning of Ben-Hur, and accompanied by nails-on-a-chalkboard screeching? (SPOILER: They repeat this at the end of the movie, making a lousy ending even worse.)

After the tedious opening credits, the film settles into a somewhat typical yet promising setup. Teacher Josh (Patrick Wilson), his wife Renai (Rose Byrne), and their two young sons and baby daughter have just moved into a typical horror movie house: big wooden central staircase, ticking grandfather clock in the hall, lots of doors that mysteriously swing open and shut, and a musty attic. Son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) suffers a mysterious accident that puts him in a medically indefinable coma. After three months of hospital care, Dalton is brought back home, still comatose. That’s when mother Renai and brother Foster (Andrew Astor) start witnessing weird and scary happenings around the house.

Reduced to tears and hysteria, Renai insists their house is haunted, and after incessant pleading, Josh packs up the family and moves them all in with his mother (Barbara Hershey, apparently the only known actor they could afford for this movie). However, the scary visions and noises continue, and Renai thinks they brought some haunting evil spirit with them. This is confirmed by Elise (Lin Shaye), a psychic friend of Josh’s mother, who tells them that it’s not the house that’s haunted–it’s their comatose son.

Despite the film’s slightly clumsy beginning, it quickly settles into a familiar yet intriguing pattern–doors open and close by themselves, and long silences are punctuated by mysterious off-camera voices and noises. One of the producers of Insidious is the producer/director of Paranormal Activity, Oren Peli, and that film’s influence is clearly felt during the first half of Insidious, although with more conventional cinematic style and not handheld vérité camerawork. Plus, Insidious is rated PG-13, so one can assume there won’t be as much gore as the R-rated Saw films, and therefore the horror will likely be psychological in nature (Paranormal Activity was largely gore-free yet scary as hell, and was only rated R because of language).

But about halfway through, the whole enterprise starts turning into crap. The initial clues are sudden, flash-cut appearances of a demon or apparition, punctuated by a loud shriek on the soundtrack–a common, cliché method of artificially pumping up audience reaction. Then there’s the truly demonic inclusion of one of the most annoying recordings ever made: Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” heard TWICE, both times accompanying apparitions. If that song is on Hell’s Top 40, I need to do a lot more praying.

The moment the movie really starts to curdle is when Barbara Hershey has an aha moment and recommends her old psychic friend. Because even though actress Lin Shaye seems to have a pleasant way about her and turns in the only interesting and halfway believable performance in the movie, she shows up with two nerdy ghostbusting assistants, one of whom is the writer of Saw and this dud, Leigh Whannell. This pair of geeks serve as the film’s lame attempt at comic relief while trying to distract the audience from realizing that Elise is a virtual copy of Tangina, the psychic memorably portrayed by Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist. I expected Elise to say “This house is cleeeeeean” at some point, but instead, she talks to the undead through a gas mask. Seriously.

After Elise, the queen of exposition, shows up with Tweedledum and Tweedledumber in tow, the movie goes right off the rails with a climactic final reel that scales new depths of cheesiness and stupidity. I won’t spoil the details for those masochists still determined to watch this mess, but it’s partly a rip-off of the classic Twilight Zone episode “Little Girl Lost,” mixed with one of those lame Halloween haunted houses where you pay 10 bucks to walk through a bunch of fog-filled passageways while people in half-assed costumes, lots of smeary makeup, and fake blood paw at you in the darkness or enact poorly staged horror scenes.

And if it isn’t bad enough that we’re subjected to such endgame inanities as a character’s spiritual form being delayed from returning to his body because THE FRONT DOOR OF THE HOUSE IS LOCKED, director James Wan and writer Whannell (the real Tweedledum and Tweedledumber) end the movie on one of those supremely cornball horror movie moments that elicited nothing but loud groans from the audience–followed by that giant screeching title card again. Honestly, do these geeky horror moviemakers really think that audiences will find that ending as cool and creepy as they think it is?

Insidious would be a perfect movie for the drive-in, where you could glance at the screen occasionally, paying semi-attention, and make snide remarks from your car in between making out with your date and trips to and from the snack bar. But drive-ins are few and far between these days, and B-movie crap like Insidious just takes up space at the multiplex, masquerading as a legitimate film worthy of your ticket purchase. It’s not.