Insidious (2011)

            Horror, as a genre, has grown tired. I hate to say that, but in 2011, one is hard pressed to find a horror film get a theatrical release without being a remake or a sequal. As I write this, Scream 4 is being prepped for it’s big release this weekend, don’t get me wrong though, I am excited about this. But to find an original horror film in a local movie theatre is something of an anomoly these days.

            So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that the writer/director team that created the original Saw film had made an entirely original haunted house flick that would be playing in my own town. Imagine my surprise even more when the reviews started telling me that it was a great throwback film to the horrors of years past. That was all I needed to hear in order for me to buy a ticket.

            The movie sets up in a very familiar fashion. A happily married couple move into a new house with their three children only to find that things are getting creepy at night. When their son has an accident up in the attic and falls into a coma-like state, they decide to pack up their things and move. It isn’t long after they move into their new home that they find that the same haunts have followed them there.

            Up until this point, the film has tread in territory that everyone has seen. At night, there are loud noises and the couple search the house for something they can never find. They see shadows on the wall, books seem out of place, and their front door gets blown open in the middle of the night. However, the way in which these scenes are crafted are incredibly unsettling and I found myself tensed up in a way that I haven’t been in a long time. My entire theatre was jumping and shrieking with each new scare and I was loving every second of it.

            Then the second half of the film kicks in and things get crazy. The couple calls on an old spiritualist for help, who tells them that their house isn’t haunted, it’s their son. His spirit is trapped in a realm called The Further and it has opened a portal to another realm that hosts evil spirits, one of which is a red-faced demon that is attempting to keep the boy in the Further forever. I don’t want to go into any more details about what happens here because it’s best to go into this movie cold and let it’s events capture you. Some people have been put off by the second half of this film, citing that it shows too much of the spirits in the Further and that it kills the suspense. I think it’s a blast and if you let yourself go with it, you’ll have a blast too.

            Whats great about this movie is that it takes a familiar set-up, makes you think you have it figured out, and then builds something entirely new and different ontop of it. It plays loving homage to one of my favorite horror films, Poltergeist, and then spins it on it’s head. The finale is so crazy that I was in awe of what was taking place in front of me. Big cheers to the final twist as well, my whole theatre screamed.

            This movie does all these things without showing hardly any onscreen blood or gore. Yes, the film is rated PG-13, but it doesn’t feel like one. It hasn’t been edited to death and butchered by studios to get this rating either. It feels genuine and will scare anyone, I promise.

            I’m writing this review because the horror community has to support films like this. We can gripe and complain all we want about how we hate sequals and remakes, but if we don’t support the few original horror films in the theatres, then we’ll continue to only get sequals and remakes. Support original horror and go see Insidious! You won’t regret it. 

-Dave