Insidious: Needlessly Complicated But Very Scary

When writing a screenplay, or any type of story for that matter, the line between over-complication and oversimplification is depressingly narrow. Lean too far in one direction, and your story ends up stuffed and unwieldy. Lean too far the other way, and you look as though you ran out of ideas halfway through writing it. But of course, guiding a movie from concept to screen and writing a book are different in as many ways as they are similar. And in the world of cinema, writing a movie is only the first half of the battle, while transferring it to the screen is but the first part of the war.

During this battle, this war, much can go wrong. And, for as overcomplicated as it can be, Insidious gets more things right than it does wrong. It's easy to see why horror fans flocked to it like flies to sickly sweet honey. Horror movies are supposed to be horrifying above all else, and even if other aspects of the film don't mesh as well, no one will accuse it of not being both frightening and frighteningly intelligent. Demonic possession has been a staple of horror films since the days of The Exorcist, and while Insidious doesn't do anything new with the concept, the direction of its thrills and chills is nothing short of inspired. This is a very, very scary movie.

You know what else is scary? Moving into a new house, even if it isn't possessed. All things considered, the Lambert family takes it in stride, at least until their son Dalton sneaks into the attic, encounters a sinister spirit, and recoils, hitting his head and falling into a coma. After a few months with no apparent improvement on Dalton's part, it becomes apparent to his mother that something treacherous and even supernatural is at play, and so Mr. Dalton reluctantly hires both Elise, a psychic, and the paranormal investigator duo of Specs and Tucker. All of this makes for a story we've all heard before, but the biggest strength of Insidious is its ability to take familiar scares and somehow make them scarier.

A major part of what makes a movie this familiar so particularly effective is the one-two punch of its sound design and score. The music of Insidious sounds like a modern interpretation of Hitchcock's Psycho, lending the movie a timeless quality that gives me one pretty good idea as to why it's still talked about today; it sounds not like it was made in 2010, but like it could have been made in any era and just so happened to be released in 2010. The soundtrack's cousin, the sound design, is sparse and clearly intended to scare you. It does just that, less with what you hear, more with what you don't. Insidious conditions you to fear silence.

The editing of this movie drips with intelligence. It has a fondness for match cuts between similar objects, which some intentional, clever cinematography effortlessly enables. Glowing orbs become lightbulbs, become other round objects, become characters walking into a quiet room where something, someone horrible is probably waiting with some evil deed at heart. Adapting to a new home is tumultuous, even if the house isn't haunted by evil spirits, and the visual elements of Insidious flow with a smoothness that belies the chaotic lifestyle of this young family trying to adapt to their new surroundings. However, even though it works as a horror movie, the things that don't work nearly as well about it are barely hidden behind the moxie of Insidious.

First impressions are essential, and Insidious makes a very strong one. However, its effective scares work double duty as a facade hiding the pieces that don't click as effortlessly. The acting in this movie is bland and tired, a strange contrast to its inspired scariness. This movie becomes about how much it can scare the Lamberts, and when you're listening to a story about a family with functioning members whose feelings you'll want to empathize with, it's hard to ignore the holes in these characters where their souls should be. One may wonder why the forces of evil in this movie are so obsessed with these people in the first place.

Another aspect that doesn't mesh is the fact that Insidious is essentially two different movies stuffed into one package, competing for attention. The first movie is a deadly effective exhibition of suspense, and the second is an understandable but tonally confused paranormal investigation that doesn't look and behave unlike a malevolent episode of Popular Mechanics For Kids. This is a deadly serious, mysterious movie until it suddenly isn't, and I was confused why it took on some humorous buddy tones occasionally reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead. For a movie with such a firm grasp of the concepts of horror filmmaking, Insidious eventually goes out of its way to water down the best things about it and explain things that were more effective when they were unexplainable. It is too often far more complicated than it needs to be.

There's no question that Insidious is frightening, and it works best when it's trying to be just that and nothing more. However, this movie thinks it's smarter than it actually is, and the longer and more complicated it gets, the less it works. As a genre film, it's unquestionably successful. As a film, it's successful to a certain extent. Nevertheless, it's easy to see why horror fans flocked to it; it's scary, and it riffs on familiar tropes in just the right way to be both comfortable in some ways and challenging in others.

Insidious is a classic case of too much movie, not enough runtime. However, the fact remains that it is utterly terrifying, and, all things considered, a part of me prefers a jumbled, unoriginal, but scary horror movie to a well-constructed one that isn't scary enough. This movie is designed to frighten you. If that isn't enough, then look elsewhere. And if it is, even critics sometimes have to admit that liking things is more fun than not.

Insidious - 7/10

Deuteronomy 18:9-12