Insidious

A friend of mine had explained the movie to me quite a while back and, having some time on my hands, being a lover of horror films (I just find them plain hilarious), AND because I had already forgotten the plot and the spoilers, I figured I'd give it a go.

The movie has the usual creepy new house premise in the beginning, what with the scary attic and the books not on the shelf, including various other little knick knacks being moved about. 

And they obviously didn't skimp on the heavy foreshadowing, considering the title for one of the books was about spiritual/astral travel, the furnace in the attic turned on by itself and weird things happened when the father was away/sleeping.

In fact there's one scene when the father falls asleep at school (after hours, of course) and is obviously travelling out of his body and watching over his son who is in a coma after falling off a ladder. 

Sidenote: There's a little chalkboard drawing of the doll from SAW behind him as he was dozing off. Because, you know...the writers of the SAW hexalogy had to put in that shameless plug...and act in the movie as the nerdy ghostbusting duo using state of the art technology such as a view finder (80's kids will know what I'm talking about).

Anyway, the movie did show some promise in the beginning, but took some hilarious turns which lead me to wonder if the writers were just farting around for the fuck of it.

Yes, I am talking about the garbage scene. 

Basically, the wife puts a record on, does a little clean-up (somehow missing the little kid facing the wall) and goes outside to take out the garbage. As she's doing so, the record skips and starts playing one of my most favourite songs "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" by Tiny Tim. As she makes her way back into the house, she sees something out the corner of her eye and peers into the living room window only to see a little boy gettin' jiggy with it. Startled, she walks towards the door, peering through the other window, but the boy is gone.

Really, that part wasn't the least bit scary and I have no idea why, when I type "Insidious, scary scene" into youtube search, THIS is the clip that always shows up.

To be honest, the only part throughout the entire movie that scared me the most was in the moments that followed after she walked into the house to look for the ghost boy. I literally jumped a bit in my seat. But the thrills die thereafter.

A priest makes a brief appearance, then a psychic and her two ghostbuster nerds show up which leads to one of the most retarded seance scenes in movie history. If Tommy Wiseau showed up yelling "You're tearing me apart, Elise!" followed by the "Oh, hi!" catch phrase, the scene would've been more watchable.

Then we find out that the skeptical husband used to do the whole astral travel thing until some old dead woman wanted in on that. The problem was somehow solved by not taking pictures of him anymore because in each picture she'd get closer and closer. 

There's no explanation for the lack of creepy old lady in the family photo.


Anyway the husband decides to get back into the astral travel thing to retrieve his son from "The Further" *chuckle* and in the process meets a few unsavoury characters -one of whom happens to be a pedophilic Darth Maul who has Dalton (the boy) chained up while he files his nails and listens to Tiny Tim via phonograph.

Fucking hipsters.


The father frees Dalton and they run. Just when they're about to go back into their respective bodies, the father gets a little cocky, tells his son to go on without him, and decides to face the old ghost woman who's been stalking him.


He wakes up from the astral travelling, Dalton wakes up, but the psychic realizes that the old woman has possessed the dad, which leads to her being choked to death and the wife finding out and end scene. 

Yes. Sadly this leaves an opening for a ridiculous sequel which is probably what the writers were looking for because they know we've had enough of the SAW franchise.