My Review of Insidious (2011)

 

Written by Leigh Whannell 

Directed by James Wan

Elise: "It's not the house that is haunted. It's your son."

It's amazing that in the last two decades that nearly every prominent horror franchise has had the involvement of both James Wan and Leigh Whannell in some capacity. With this movie, the former directed a script from the latter.

We've got a seemingly normal family. Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) have moved into a house with their sons Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and Foster (Andrew Astor) and baby Kali. Already you can tell where this was going to go.

It didn't take long for a mystery force to render poor Dalton into a coma and nor did it take both Josh and Renai long to realise that their new home had other occupants to boot. The married couple were out of their depth and needed help.

That was where Josh's mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) came in handy. Specifically her connection to medium and this franchise's most prominent character in Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). If she couldn't help the Lamberts with their problem, then no one could.

Elise's team included the duo Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson). They're comic foils of sort but surprisingly competent as Elise took Josh into The Further and raked through various repressed memories in order to rescue Dalton. It turned out that both Dalton and Josh can astral project.

Of course there's a mean old lady spirit as well as other things such as Lipstick-Face Demon (Joseph Bishara), Dancing Boy (Ben Woolf) and Long Haired Fiend (J. LaRose). There's also a rather shocking end for a particular character who's only going to be more emphasised in later movies.

- Both Wan and Whannell worked on the Saw franchise while Patrick Wilson would be instrumental in The Conjuring franchise.

- The post credit had the old woman blowing out a candle.

- Standout music: Ludovico Einaudi's Nuvole Bianche.

- Chronology: It's set in the 2010, Dalton was comatose for three months and we had flashbacks to Josh's childhood.

Insidious as a franchise got off to a modest start with this one. The scares are decent, the Lamberts are a sympathetic lot with their own secrets but it's Lin Shaye's Elise that somewhat stole the movie.

Rating: 7 out of 10