Sorry for the long delay in reviews, i have been working on some side projects that have taken up most of my time, but don't fear im back with a new review. Insidious is an old fashioned haunting film and it comes from the makers of SAW and Death Sentence, James Wan and Leigh Whannell. It's a very creepy film and with Halloween fast approaching it's great film for 31st of October. Check out my review after the Jump. 
I've never been a fan of supernatural horror films, ones that deal with ghosts and goulies because I don't think any film could ever reach the sheer tension and horror created by Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) and John Hough's The Legend Of Hell House (1973), some have come close, Poltergeist being one of those films but that's covered in so much Spielberg it loses it's horror element, even Paranormal Activity came close but was plagued by the fact that it's obviously fake. James Wan's Insidious is probably the closest a film has ever gotten to making me pause the film for a minute just to regain my composure. Insidious is a tremendous achievement in modern horror film making as it doesn't rely on the level of gore Wan gave us in the Saw franchise, instead opting more for the subtle, creaking doors, lights flicking on and off, catching something in the corner of your eye and beyond all this, he's brought back the jump scare. Josh and Renai Lambert have just moved into a new house with their three children. One night their eldest son Dalton has an accident in the attic. The following day Josh has trouble waking Dalton up, he's seemingly fallen into a coma, the Renai starts seeing things, thing's that are out of the ordinary and this scares the shit out of here. She forces Josh to let them move to a new house, but things go from bad to worse as the evil has somehow followed them. They enlist, along with Josh's mother, the help of medium Elise to help get to the bottom of the what's happening. When she arrives, the film goes from eerie evil lurking in the shadows to full on A Nightmare On Elm Street dream worlds and while this does detract from the film for about two minutes, it does add more to the characters of Josh and Dalton.
Wan has assembled a great cast too with the likes of Patrick Wilson (Watchmen) and the lovely Rose Byrne (X-Men: First Class) and ropes in horror veteran Lin Shaye for the role of Elise, but topping off an already great cast he throws in Barbara Hershey as Josh's mother.
Patrick Wilson is great as the father to Dalton and as the husband having to deal with what at first he must think is his wife having a breakdown until he finally comes to his senses. It's handy to have an actor who is a father in real life to play opposite very young children, because you can clearly see the connection between them.
Rose Byrne is great as Renai. Having seen her lately in X-Men: First Class and Get Him To The Greek I can say Rose Byrne is slowly turning into a actress to watch and she gives a wonderful performance as the mother who, while not only having to deal with the fact her son may never regain consciousness, also has to deal with the ghostly goings on in the so called haunted house, she gives a good performance that isn't that far removed from Jobeth Williams performance in Poltergeist. Keep an eye on Rose as I think we'll be seeing a lot more of her...
Lin Shaye, who you may recognise from films such as There's Something About Mary and more recently, weepy My Sister's Keeper, but Shaye is a well know horror veteran. She plays the role of Elise, the medium hired by Renai to help her son and find out the reasons for the evil that is present. Although I did expect her at some point to say 'CAROLANNE! CAROLANNE!, she never did and while still playing the same sort of role as Zelda Rubenstein in Poltergeist, she does bring her own quirky charm to an otherwise familiar character.
Finally we have Barbara Hershey popping up as Josh's mother, who doesn't really have much need to be in the film until the final act, but as usual Hershey is pretty good, not as good as she was in Black Swan, playing Natalie Portman's crazy mother, but still pretty good. I've never really been a fan of her and I thought she was totally miss cast in Falling Down (1993) but I can live with her in films, I just think she's overrated as an actress.
James Wan and his partner in crime Leigh Whannell have crafted a genuinely creepy film, a style which has been sorely missing from horror movies of late and along with Whannell's excellent script, Wan amps up the tension thanks to some pretty good directing. He manages to make houses look creepy even ones that don't necessarily look frightening and it's also one of the first films to utilize a fog machine since the 1980s, I do like a bit of fog in my horror, makes me feel all Halloween-y, but I have to give the guys props for this film as it's from the guys who gave us the fucking seven billion SAW movies, with Insidious they've gone the other way and left out all the gore and went for atmosphere which for me, and I say this being a fan of splatter flicks, makes the film stand out more than your average haunted house horror of late.
Apart from the obvious similarities to previous haunting films, and I mean ones that aren't about fucking exorcisms, there is a sort of originality to the film, the demon for instance is very very creepy but does in part look like Darth Maul, a problem a lot of people had with the film, I was able to see past this and enjoy this as a good old fashioned haunting film.
Insidious isn't going to win any major accolades but may garner a few more subscribers to the talents of Wan and Whannell after all they did bring us the excellent Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon and the first Saw film, which to be honest is a very clever film and one I consider to be more a thriller than horror. But with Insidious I found my self actually slightly freaked out for the first 45 minutes or so until the second act twisted the film into a hybrid of Elm St meets Poltergeist but I enjoyed this. I hope we get more straight forward chiller's like this from these two and I hope to god we don't find them back at the Torture porn table any time soon.
This is a great little film if a bit familiar in plot, but it's effective and very well made. I don't think a film has freaked me out since the first time I ever saw The Shining. Don't get me wrong, im not comparing James Wan to Stanley Kubrick, that would be idiot speak, the man was a visual genius who is sorely missed, what I am saying is that in the horror genre today, a genre that consists mainly of full blooded gore soaked movies and Zombies, it's a breath of fresh air to find a film made in such a professional way that is actually very effective at what it sets out to do to the viewer. Halloween is coming up and this is a great little film to chuck on, turn off all the lights and get creeped the fuck out by. I really enjoyed this and I hope more people feel the same way. It's the closest a film can get to being a remake of Poltergeist without actually being a remake of Poltergeist. Highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment