Insidious Blu-ray review

• 14th Sep 2011

Insidious is a film made by two horror fans for the mainstream horror market. Writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan, as progenitors of the visceral Saw series, made much of their desire to move away from the grisly trappings of Jigsaw’s deranged endeavours and decided to focus their energies on something a little spookier: a haunted house film. So we have Insidious, which follows the haunted house conventions relatively closely: a young family move into a nice old house, things go bump in the night, young son falls into coma/gets possessed by forces unseen.

As ever with these genre films, the beginning portion of the film is by far the better and more effective; shadowy figures and lurking shadows at windows have always been high on the scare scale. There are several ‘jump-scares’ but these are backed up with a general air of uneasiness and disquiet and the film is not entirely reliant on the familiar ‘it’s behind you’ frights. The score, with plenty of the traditional discordant-horror-movie-strings, adds to this suitably spooky environment. Where the ghostly baddies are pretty good, the performances from their human counterparts are underwhelming, and Rose Byrne is utterly unconvincing as a mother to the beleaguered family. The exception to this is Lin Shaye’s Elise, who strides through the film like she owns it, obviously relishing the part. Whannell also makes a comedic appearance, as one half of a bumbling duo of ghost hunters (with shades of Supernatural’s Ghostfacers), with a not-necessarily-needed dose of comic relief.

It is apparent, however, that Whannell and Wan wanted an element of something more theatrical in the film, perhaps in an attempt to avoid all the genre conventions. The entity that provides most of the good scares also has a penchant for red velvet and ukulele music, which, however odd, adds little to the sinister atmosphere. This desire to include something unusual for the genre unfortunately produces rather silly results, almost totally negating the nicely compiled feeling of dread. The dramatic showdown is hampered by the feeling that we are actually in an amateur Hallowe’en haunted house, with altogether too much dry ice.

On the whole, however, it is a fun, creepy film and I am more than happy that someone is steering the genre away from the torture porn variety, even if these two are at least partly responsible for the current hegemony of that brand.

The extras are some commentaries from Wan and Whannell on their vision for the film, some on-set bits, as well as detailing their influences in a ‘Horror 101’ seminar featurette, which is very much for the horror newbies, so don’t get excited if you know anything about horror – there isn’t anything you can’t spot in the film!

Hannah Turner