Leaving on an Astral Plane

Too many ghosts and too many old tricks spoil the broth
by Morgan P Salvo

Ah… another haunted house movie or as the previews say “its not the house that’s haunted …it’s your son!” Well house or son Insidious, still qualifies as a haunted house flick sans “haunting” in the title, thereby destined to suck.
The definition of insidious is a) stealthily treacherous or deceitful b) intended to entrap c) operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect I’ll go with all three.
This movie is so insipid and simplistic it’s a wonder it got the go ahead. I guess with the reteaming of director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell (creators of the very first Saw) and Oren Peli the producer of Paranormal Activity (one of the worst movies ever made) there was a glimmer of hope. Well hope be damned. Insidious wipes away any chance for redemption, as the pairing of the worst and best filmmakers of this genre doesn’t even come out a wash.

Insidious is about a couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) who’ve just moved into Amityville Horror ’s neighborhood with a home plagued by the usual creaking floorboards, clanks, howls, bumps-in-the nights and every sinister disturbance in the book. When the family's young sons lapses into a coma we find his spirit has been hijacked, overtaken by ghosts who have a way of popping up in different forms and silhouetted nightmare faces.
There’s a zillion tricks in this Poltergeist remake thrown at us at varying degrees but main scare tactic is supposed to be its slow pace. But it's far more annoying and boring than frightening.
Beginning with creepy credits emanating ghost-like vapors Insidious takes a cue from Drag Me to Hell by launching the name of the film in huge letters and blaring music. Speaking of which, the frenzied avant garde string arrangement by Joe Bishara is set to rival Goblin’s finger-nail-on-a-blackboard Suspiria’s soundtrack. Soon the parents and children move from the haunted house to find the same demonic crap happening to them all over again in their new place. Send in the ghost-busters (Whannell and Angus Sampson), the medium (Lin Shaye) and a secretive mom (Barbary Hershey) and away we paranormally go. We find out about an astral pane called “the further” where entities get in line and basically take a number to try and possess the soul of an empty body.

Insidious could have ventured into high camp if it didn’t take itself so seriously. When I play back all the stuff that happened it sounds downright funny. But it wasn’t. Dealing with an out-of nowhere coma the doctors comes from the “Never seen anything like this” school of medical science. A scary baby monitor pumping out voices straight from Black X-mas doesn’t jar. Ghost-hunters show up with plenty of gizmos, bells and whistles while the clairvoyant medium wears a gasmask for a lantern lit séance. The gadgetry happy ghost hunters are obviously comic relief but its too obvious to be funny as they fuss around with antique cameras and vintage View-Master gizmos.
I’ve heard this flick referred to a combo of Carnival of Souls meets David Lynch and that’s overreaching. Insidious has neither sensibility, but rather a TV movie’s feel with tired old genre’s tricks and clichés, none of them scary or amusing just deadpan and lifeless.

Insidious looks cool. There was about one minute total in this running time of ingenuity the rest was just bad ideas made to look good. Wan's camera likes to slowly capture vacant parts of the frame, while the soundtrack uses every creaky door and ticking clock at its disposal. When the father/son bonding time comes through an astral plane portal this is where the movie could have gone all “Altered States mind-trippy” but the astral projection world lacks any imaginative fear and or surrealism. Instead of opening the doors to creative imagery we just get sucked into another riff in a juxtaposed haunted house. Go figure. Inside resides the main demon who looks he’s wearing a Darth Maul Halloween mask prancing around the Jeepers Creepers monster’s lair as he plays Tiny Tim’s “tiptoe through the tulips” (kinda scary).
Byrne does an adequate job as the mom tormented by ghosts. Shaye (the raunchy landlady in Something About Mary) seems like the only one who knows what this movie is about. And Wilson had me wondering if he is really an actor at all. He’s the same guy in every movie. From The Watchmen, Hard Candy and Lakeview Terrace - all I see is a suburban white guy with no depth or range. By far the scariest part was the camera zooming in on Barbara Hershey’s seemingly botched plastic surgery creepily exposed under the green hues of Wan’s Saw-lensed camera.
I think the man problem maybe isn’t with the movie it’s with me. I have a hard time getting scared so if it’s anything I’ve ever seen before or has nothing original to offer I am looking at my watch. Please can’t some film out there scare me?
Insidious didn’t have to have “haunting” in the title to suck. The mere fact that it’s a haunted house flick with no redeeming originality let it suck all on its own.

Insidious
Starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey
Directed by James Wan
1 ½ stars