Horror is an extremely subjective genre. What scares one will strike another as silly, what prompts shrieks of terror in some will draw only shrugs from others. As most other people, I have a very specific and very personal idea of what scares me and things that don’t fall within that parameter often leave me indifferent. Insidious, the new horror film from the writer and director of the original Saw, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, hit me right where it counts, offering one of the scariest film experiences that I’ve had in a theater and perhaps ever.
Insidious tells the story of a family (consisting of a mother and father, two young sons and a baby girl) who move into a new house and soon begin to experience strange paranormal phenomena. Objects in the house move themselves around, voices are heard through the baby monitor and more increasingly malevolent forces appear to manifest, particularly around the family’s oldest son who has fallen into a mysterious coma. As is expected, the family’s attempts to ignore or avoid these forces meet with failure, which leads them to bring on a paranormal investigator and her team who discover that the evil which haunts this family has even darker (and more personal) designs on them then they could have imagined.
Insidious fits squarely within my favorite genre of horror: The Haunted House story. Forget about demonic possessions, psycho slashers and torturous madmen. Give me unexplained noises, spectral figures and darkened corners that promise something sinister. The film is remarkably paced, giving us the basic setup early on before immediately bringing the scares, never subsiding but rather ratcheting up the tension until it becomes almost unbearable. There are so many moments and images from the film that tap right in to deeply felt anxieties: strange figures pacing the hallways at night, creatures hiding in the darkness of a room and so on. The film relies largely on so-called “jump scares,” which come across as shallow gimmicks in other horror films, but are used to terrific effect here. One crucial distinction in the way this film uses jump scares is that they are never “fake-out” scares, ones in which a loud noise reveal something innocent like a cat or some other innocuous source. Director James Wan knows his horror conventions and he knows what his audience is expecting. Thus one of the joys of the film is constantly having your expectations upended, your attention focused on one thing only to be shocked in some other, clever way.
The film also delivers in ways other than scares. The cast all bring their A-game, with Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne both delivering grounded performances that make the horror seem all the more real as the film progresses. Barbara Hershey, enjoying a nice genre-pic revival with this and Black Swan, delivers as Wilson’s mother who may know more about the haunting then she lets on. The standouts by far, however, are the paranormal investigators, played by Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell (who also wrote the film) and Angus Sampson. They bring a comic touch to the film precisely when it is needed, bringing some welcome relief while never throwing off the balance of the film’s ominous tone. The film looks great, atmospheric like a good haunted house film should be. I was astonished to hear that the film cost only $1 million to produce. That’s less than the first Saw film and a welcome reminder that no amount of money can replace filmmaking ingenuity and knowledge of craft.
I loved Insidious. The film pinned me to my seat, often forcing me to cover my eyes with my hand. At one point, I’m man enough to admit, I even shouted in terror at the screen. It was completely involuntary and a sign of how effective Insidious is for the duration of its runtime. Rare is the film that can have that effect on me. Rarer still is the film that can do that and be such an exhilarating and downright fun experience. See this movie and see it with the largest possible audience. If you’re anything like me then you’ll want to relive the experience as soon as it’s over.
No comments:
Post a Comment