Haunted House of Horrendous Horror: "Insidious" Movie Review

Who's in it: Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Lin Shaye, Leigh Whanell, Barbara Hershey

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material, violence, terror and frightening images, and brief strong language.

What it's about: Josh and Renai Lambert have two sons. One who is irrelevant and unimportant therefore I don't care that I don't remember his name, and the other whose name is Dalton, the kid from the poster.  

Shortly after moving into a new house, eerie and unexplainable things which are explained later on in the movie start to happen, such as seeing red-and-black-faced, earring-laden, white-eyed, messy-haired demons. But this guy, this normal looking guy you see above, doesn't believe any of his wife's terrifying truths.  

Yes, I'm talking about the man 10 inches away from the previously described freak. No, normal guy is too busy being a wuss and staying late at work as a teacher (which baffles me that he has a massive house,) leaving his wife at home to be emotionally tormented. On top of it, Dalton has entered a coma, and remains in it for 3 months while supernatural stuff continues to happen only to Renai, until finally they move to a new house.  

In comes the tagline: "It's not the house thats haunted." As in, IT'S THE KID IN A COMA. He's stuck in a place called "The Further,, according to some old psychic lady, and one of the parents must go inside of this "further" place to bring Dalton back out. Wait a minute -- I just described the plot ofThe Poltergeist.

What I think about it: Its been a long while since I've went to the theaters and watched a movie that has actually creeped me out. Paranormal Activity 2 kinda did it for me, but only at one point in that entire movie did I feel scared. The last movie I saw that scared me not in theaters was The Evil Dead, a Bruce Cambell/Sam Raimi one-two  punch of a horror/slight comedy. Everybody should watch that now.  

But anyways, that streak of failed attempts to frighten me ended on the night I went to see this film. It brought me back to the days (the days which, of course, I wasn't alive for) of old school horror where the budget was low and the movie could rely on pure, tension-building terror to scare people rather than gore and special effects.  

Terrible lead acting by Rose Byrne aside, this movie did what it intended to in making the entire audience crap their pants. And by entire audience, it was just me and my friend in the theater, which somehow made it 10 TIMES SCARIER. But we didn't actually crap our pants.  

Only I did.

Best Parts: The whole first hour or so. This was the time where Rose Byrne would see creepy people/creatures littered throughout her house in trenchcoats and wedding dresses, pacing up and down the porch outside or just casually walking down the halls. Even midgets. And then night turns to day and the sun comes out and all of that mumbo jumbo stops for a little bit right? Wrong-o.  

It continues to happen in broad daylight, a usual horror movie no-no. But trust me, it worked here, and as unscary as all of that may sound... well, you clearly already know I think its scary.  

The other best part was explained well by one of my friends: "I think it's hilarious that it's PG-13 so all these little kids are gonna go watch this and be scarred for life." #realtalk.

The Big Finale: Almost always, when I have an "Ending" or "Big Finale" section in my review, I find myself praising it. But not this time. It's not like the end was underwhelming by a horror thriller standard, it was actually near over-the-top, but it was just not as scary as the earlier parts of the movie.  

That comes with the territory of having a terrifying start to a movie, the end can only either meet expectations or disappoint. In this case, I was disappointed.

The Ending After the Big Finale(Back to Praising): What a great twist! Well these are the Saw guys. You can expect nothing less.

Overall Grade: B