“Insidious” is the terrifying story of a family who, shortly after moving, discovers that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son has inexplicably fallen into a coma. Trying to escape the haunting and save their son, they move again, only to realize that their house is not haunted.
Director James Wan became an overnight sensation when his second feature film, “Saw,” was released in 2004 and became a box-office hit. While the film spawned a very lucrative franchise and countless sequels, he never directed another entry in the series, instead choosing to work on new material. In 2010, he directed the supernatural horror thriller “Insidious,” and with that endeavor, he delivered one of the scariest horror films to come along in some time.
While he went on to direct “Insidious: Chapter 2,” he would also create another terrifying horror franchise with The Conjuring films, directing the first two in the series. But Wan moved into blockbuster territory when he directed “Furious 7” and “Aquaman,” proving to the world that while horror may be his forte, he was more than capable of directing anything else. While he is attached to numerous upcoming horror films in a producer capacity, including “The Tommyknockers,” “The Crooked Man,” “M3GAN 2.0,” “The Nun II,” and the upcoming “Insidious: The Red Door,” his only directorial responsibilities are “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” but I eagerly await his return to the director’s chair for another horror flick.
“Insidious,” tells the story of married couple Josh and Renai Lambert (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), their sons Dalton (Ty Simpkins), Foster (Andrew Astor), and their infant daughter Kali. Shortly after moving into their new home, the family begins to experience frightening paranormal events, and Renai is convinced that their house is haunted. After Dalton has a fall in the attic, he slips into a coma and remains comatose. When Josh’s mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), comes to visit, Renai tells her what they’ve been experiencing, and she confesses to them that something similar happened when Josh was a child, but he has no recollection of it.
Lorraine reaches out to her friend Elise (Lin Shaye), a psychic, and asks her to come to Josh and Ranei’s house. Upon her arrival, she explores the house and senses a terrible evil spirit. Upon further investigation, she learns that Dalton, like his father, can astral project, but he is not in a coma; his consciousness traveled too far, and inadvertently reached a purgatory dimension called “The Further”, where a demon traps him. Elise tells Josh that he had the same ability when he was young but that she suppressed his memory of it as it was too frightening. Now that he remembers, Elise tells him the only way for them to get Dalton back is for Josh to use his gift to travel to The Further and rescue Dalton before it’s too late.
While movies about demons and demonic possession are a dime a dozen, it is always worth checking out when James Wan makes one. Many horror films utilize cheap jump scares and gimmicks, you know what I’m talking about, a cat jumping through a window, the killer’s reflection in a mirror, a loud musical sting, but with Wan, he crafts genuinely terrifying jump scares. Who can forget that one scene in “Insidious” during a conversation in the middle of the day when a red-faced demon unexpectedly appears and disappears just as swiftly? For the most part, I am not prone to jump scares; maybe it’s because I’m an independent filmmaker, and I understand the set-up of most scenes, especially in horror movies, but Wan has gotten me a few times. He doesn’t allow his jumpscares to take possession of the story (pun intended) because, like any ingredient that works, it can be overdone, so he builds the rest of the story upon suspense, unease, and twists.
“Insidious” works because you think you know what you’re in for, another haunted house flick, another demonic-possession story, but while it incorporates all of these tropes, plus many more, Wan turns everything upside down and forces you to reevaluate your thought process and everything transpiring on the screen. His editing techniques and camera zooms and pans display unnerving elements to the audience’s subconscious, eliminating any traces of blood and gore found in his earlier outings, replacing them with the visceral terror of the supernatural.
Wan doesn’t appear to have anything lined up as director after this year’s release of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” but I hope that changes. While he has a lot of projects in various stages of development as a producer, maybe he’s taking some time off to reevaluate the horror landscape as it stands. After all, he brought us the original “Saw” in 2004, took a few years and then made “Insidious,” and a few years later, gave us “The Conjuring,” so hopefully, he’s working out a new strategy that will culminate in a new horror film in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, if you still haven’t seen “Insidious,” be sure to check it out. And whatever you do, watch it at night with all the lights off and the volume turned up!
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