Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey, Lin Shaye, Andrew Astor, and Leigh Whannell
From the mind of Saw scribe, Leigh Whannell, comesInsidious, a different side of the horror spectrum. Instead of a serial killer who communicates through a satanic-like puppet, Insidious offers a look into the world of ghosts and demons.
After moving into their new home, Josh Lampert (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) begin to witness supernatural events. The occurrences are trivial at first, but this changes quickly. After Dalton (Ty Simpkins), the Lampert’s son, mysteriously falls into a coma, full body apparitions begin to torment the family. Fearful, Renai talks Josh into moving. However, the haunting resumes in their new home almost immediately, with the addition of new spectres.
It’s at this point that the couple consults Josh’s mother (Barbara Hershey) who advises them to turn to her friend Elise (Lin Shaye), a paranormal expert. Elise does a preliminary investigation of the situation and discovers something critical. It is not the Lampert’s house that’s haunted but instead the body of their son Dalton. The boy has the ability to leave his body while asleep and became trapped in the ‘spirit world’ on one such trip. Now that he is trapped, his body is up for grabs, and all sorts of ghosts and demons are trying to make use of it. With the help of Elise and her team, the family must figure out a way to bring Dalton back to his body.
The cast does a fine job with the material at hand, but there was not much depth to any of the characters. The movie primarily focuses on the characters' reactions to ghosts and demons that seem to just keep appearing out of nowhere, only to disappear just as quickly.
Towards the end we get a tour of the spirit world. It's just like the real world, only dark and fogged over. I was keen to see how they portrayed this world, but I have to say the way they did it was pretty boring and unimaginative.
At the very end of the movie, an army of ghosts seems to just walk in the front door of their house. They're attempting to enter and possess the empty body of Dalton. Instead of a nightmarish, frightful climax, this scene just looks like the cast showed up for a Halloween party.
Insidious is moderately entertaining, and I did like the old school title screen. However, I began to lose interest as the movie went on. Of course it was nothing a few cocktails couldn’t fix to get to the end.
