Review of Insidious (2011) by Mariebella C — 25 Jul 2013

In 'Danse Macabre', Stephen King's indispensable guide to all things horror, the author insightfully discusses the problem facing any filmmaker who attempts to scare the audience with an essentially unrealistic threat - say an atomic-spawned monster, or maybe a ghost or poltergeist. As humans we are conditioned to be scared of the dark for the simple reason that we don't have any idea of what may be lurking within it. When you're lying in bed in the middle of the night in a house that you know is empty but you can still hear something moving about - creaking floorboards, an unfamiliar tread outside your door - your imagination runs riot. It could be anything out there, after all. Maybe it's something that doesn't mean to harm you. Or maybe not. You can't know for sure, and that gap - the gap between knowing something is present but not knowing what it is or what it intends to do - is fertile ground for purveyors of horror. The best horror filmmakers have unearthed many treasures in that clammy soil...

But at some point in the movie the filmmakers will actually have to show the audience the spooky presence that has, until now, been lurking in the shadows, hidden from sight. In effect, after spending so much time forcing their audience to imagine what they're sharing the dark with, they're going to have to turn the lights on and give us a good look at it. And this gives rise to what King might term the 'zipper down the back of the rubber suit' problem. Once we actually get a good look at the previously unseen presence, it almost always becomes less scary. If a fifty-foot monster slithers its way out of the wardrobe, we watch it with some measure of relief; well, we think, at least it's not a hundred feet tall. When the ghost is finally revealed as a guy in a sheet, or a woman under a slather of make-up, or a CGI fog... well, that's something all of us can handle, isn't it? The horrors we actually observe are no match for those evoked by our imaginations as we sit in the dark, waiting for the ghoul to present itself.

Some filmmakers, a very few, have successfully avoided the problem. King quotes Robert Wise's 'The Haunting', a film that keeps things oblique and therefore retains its spooky atmosphere up until the very end. King's a fan of that movie, but reading 'Danse Macabre' you get a sense that he believes this is a slightly dishonourable way for Wise to behaved. It's certainly not King's way. Yes, the 'zipper down the back of the rubber suit' is a big problem, but if a horror storyteller doesn't ante up and show their ghoul then, in some sense, they're not really playing the game to win; they're only playing for a draw. And in the horror game, King suggests, one should always swing for the fences even though the chances of successfully knocking one out of the park are slim.

Most filmmakers share King's opinion and eventually lay their cards on the table, and time and time again they are felled by the 'zipper down the back of the rubber suit' problem. The threat is revealed and the audience breathes a sigh of relief. By the time the movie ends, the dread established in the first or second acts is a distant memory and the viewer is able to walk home in the dark or through that spooky car park thoroughly untroubled.

For nearly an entire hour of his supernatural horror film 'Insidious', James Wan skilfully builds a genuinely unnerving atmosphere, making us imagine the things that might be about to lurch into those tantalisingly empty corners of the frame. As the nerves of his central characters (well-played by Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson) fray, so do ours. He makes us lean forward in our seats in suspense, and throws in a number of eerie images and well-constructed scares. It's all very effective and sometimes very unnerving. But then...

55 minutes. That's the point when the movie self-destructs. I know because as soon as I realised the gig was up I looked at the Blu-Ray player's counter. I've very rarely been so aware on a first viewing of the moment that a movie imploded, and it was a dispiriting experience. There were some early signs of danger; a couple of friendly comic relief ghost-busters turn up which was problematic but okay, I suppose. I gave them a pass. But those goofy rascals are soon followed by an aged female medium (is there any other kind in these sorts of films?) who spouts a lot of borderline hysterical exposition about astral projection and the film is effectively over. All of the tension than Wan had worked so hard to build up evaporated in less than a minute, and what had previously seemed genuinely nerve-shredding was suddenly hokey. Actually, it was worse than that; it now seemed stupid and as a result I felt stupid too. It was as if I'd been hoodwinked by some skilled con-man who had let his facade collapse at the crucial moment. This is what I had been so unnerved by? Really? What an idiot!

'Insidious' staggers on for another half an hour or so, and every minute that passes does irreparable damage to the good will created by its tautly-constructed and highly effective first half. Barbara Hershey and Lin Shaye give... eccentric performances, far out of kilter with the excellent work done by Byrne and Wilson; in fact Byrne is completely marginalised in the film's last third while Wilson finds his character stuck in a situation which would test Lawrence Olivier to his limits and it's to his credit that he never flinches in the face of ridiculousness that surrounds him.

But man, is it ever ridiculous. By the time the main characters are being surrounded by a gaggle of wraiths that are less scary than the cast of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video, I was almost entirely disinterested and kind of sad about it. When 'Insidious' finally limped over the finish line I could barely remember how creeped out I had been just forty minutes earlier. Feeling a bit bummed out I got up, turned off all the lights in the house and went to bed. In the dark. And I slept like a baby.

Three stars for the first 55 minutes, and negative one star for everything after that.