Hey, a film from James Wan (Saw and The Conjuring) starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, and Lin Shaye. In theory, this sounds great. In practice……..I bring you, Insidious. That fucker Oren Pelli is involved in this. No wonder I feel the way I do about this.
We have the Lambert family: Josh, Renai, and their sons Dalton and Foster, and baby sister Cali. They just moved to a new place. Renai found some books of hers out of the box and on the floor, the kids deny anything. Ohhh, the scares. She ends up hearing something in the attic, checks it out, nothing. Dalton hears something in the attic, he goes investigating, he falls from a broken ladder. The parents hear him screaming and the awful piano/organ music.
The next day, Dalton is in a coma.
3 Months Later
Dalton is still in a coma, but he’s home and he’s getting a feeding tube. Renai is playing her piano and hears weird sounds on the baby monitor. We hear some voice about wanting it now, and she runs up to the baby’s room, and she sees nothing because in this day and age, nothing is scarier than anything, or so they try to make us believe. Foster wants to switch rooms, he says that Dalton sleepwalks. Foster is in the bathroom, the parents are in bed talking, and they hear banging or knocking at the door. He goes to look and the outdoor light goes off. And guess who’s there. That’s right, nobody. The baby is crying, and Renai looks, and there was a male figure outside the window. The home alarm goes off, the door is open, the chain is swinging. Of course, all of this leads to, you guessed it, nothing.
The nurse leaves the next day, and Renai sees a bloody handprint on Dalton’s bed sheet. Renai is upset because Josh has to stay late at work grading tests, he’s a teacher. She accuses him of avoiding stressful situations. At night, Josh sleeps on the couch, Renai wakes up to some creepy dude next to her making some demonic noise. She is scared, he finds nothing. Oh this ping pong battle of wits between demon and her.
They move. The next day, she takes the garbage out, and somebody is playing “Tiptoe through the tulips” and she sees a boy dancing. She then doesn’t see him, then she does as he runs into Foster’s room. She finds the kid in a closet dresser, whatever, and he runs off. Renai wants to get a priest to help. Lorraine, Josh’s mom tells of a dream she had with a Dalton in his bed, and some figure standing in the corner. When she asks the figure what it wants, it says Dalton. At the end of the story, Lorraine sees a red demon behind Josh that is short-lived. Then there is noise upstairs in Dalton’s room, he’s on the ground, there are bloody handprints all over the sheets.
We meet Specs and Tucker. Tucker appears to have a Hot Pocket, and I see yellow implying cheese. I don’t think it is ham, it may be pepperoni or the cheeseburger. Anyway, these are the paranormal experts I guess. Tucker sees 2 girls on his camera that was a jump scare moment in a cliche-filled film with tons of useless jump scares. We meet Elise Rainer, she’s the real expert and can see things. So can I. Right now I am seeing a bad movie. More loud noises. God, this movie is giving me a headache. Elise lets them know that it’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s Dalton.
Elise blathers on incessantly about astral projections and some lots real she calls “The Further”. She just said Insidious! That’s the name of the movie. Josh isn’t buying into this, and he gives them all the boot. Good for him. He feels bad, allows them to come back to help.
Elise is some awful mask. Really, people saw this and thought that this was a good movie? REALLY? Some man with fire on his face is being a peckerhead per Dalton per this ridiculous nonsense. Elise collapses, Dalton is up, has some power, the room is going crazy, there are all the ghosts. Dalton just bitch-slapped Specs. The Dude with dark hair is going after Renai and Josh, and Elise is grabbing Dalton telling the demon to leave the body. 30 more dreadful minutes.
They have video footage showing the demon. Lorraine comes over. We learned that Josh was a gifted traveler and passed it down to Dalton. Flashbacks and such. We see via old photos of the demon getting close to Josh. SO they are sending John to the Further. Ugh. This whole living room bit is half silly, half creepy. At times it works and is probably the best part of the whole film. He now sees a red door upstairs, no mentioning of painting it black. He is fighting dark hair demon guy. So he beats the guy. He finds Dalton, and here we go with “Tiptoe through the tulips”, and this……this is so dumb. So we have this absolutely annoying confrontation with Josh and the head demon I guess.
Some stuff happened, Josh wins and wakes up and Dalton is healthy and happy. Oh, Josh is still possessed and is strangling Elise after she took a picture of him. She dead, and Renai is looking for Josh. Renai looks at the camera, realizes what’s up, we know it was the black-veiled demon, and Josh puts his hand on Renai’s shoulder, and the music gets super loud and we see the title.
End Film
What a terribly obnoxious film who’s only “terror” lies within jump scares and loud music with low talking cast. Are you fucking serious? This is the anti-horror film to me. It is bottom of the barrel, pure drivel. And it sucks because the story was there, well until The Further became involved, it could have gone somewhere positively. Visually, it looked nice. I sit here and I get mad because this was a wasted opportunity. This could have been something great, and instead, they fucking blew it. This movie insults my very horror being. Even worse, was that it just changed it’s mind, out of the blue, and just dragged you down the shit hole from whence it came. Fuck this movie. This was like a bad relationship. It had some nice perks early on despite the bitch being noisy, but you took it in stride, but by the end, you became invested and then to just get fucked over. This movie is every bad girlfriend ever.
Also, fun fact: This film is not that bad with no sound on. Visually it’s pretty good surprisingly.
Final rating: 3.5 As the visuals are really good, hell the story for 60% of it is really good, but the jump scares and loud music for the sake of jump scares, and the last act all suck.
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Alliance Films (presentation)
- IM Global (in association with)
- Haunted Movies (production)
- Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA)
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