Review of Insidious (2011) by Brett C — 11 Jul 2014

Review In A Nutshell:

Insidious featured an abysmal story that failed to keep my attention. It follows a family who lost their son, falling into a coma, while also being haunted by supernatural entities. I came in expecting a well-made horror film that delivers a decent story and enough memorable scare moments, but that was far from what I got. This film, right from the start, failed to establish interesting characters; which is an aspect I believe is important as these are the people we are following for the full hour and a half, and it helps elevate the sense of danger during the latter part of the film. If the film fails to deliver a strong plot and empathetic characters, at least have surprising scares in order to keep its audience minimally invested. James Wan, the director, tries so hard to create this sense of horror and mystery in its atmosphere but instead it came off as forced and tiring. Even during the film's third act, when we are sent into a realm where things are supposed to feel horrific and creepy, it again fails to keep me interested and finding it to be remotely memorable. Insidious' score is so palpable and forced that even the film's simplistic scares have no effect on me. The only thing that prevented me from feeling this is one of the worst films I have seen, is its decent performances from the actors. Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson wasn't that bad, they take their roles seriously and do as much as they could in order to make the film tolerable. I cannot help but compare this to The Conjuring, as that was the best film I have seen from James Wan; it had interesting characters and a plot that remains engaging until its final shot. Yes, I have repeated the word fail in this review like a thousand times, because this film is an utter failure.