Insidious

Insidious is a movie that did not grab me at first.  The cover art is pretty generic and the tagline "it's not the house that's haunted" nearly made me yawn, and of course proclaiming loudly on the cover that it was from the makers of Paranormal Activity (which I did not like the second or third) was a huge turn-off.  But, after a few days of seeing nothing worth reviewing and hearing mixed opinions about the scariness of Insidious I decided to watch it.  Insidious is great!

The first part of the movie is pretty standard fare for anyone who's seen the Paranormal Activity movies (minus the home camera style filming): a family moves into a new house and strange things start happening, one of the sons falls into an unexplained coma for over three months and the family members, particularly the mother, begin to experience all manner of paranormal activity in the house (haha!).  Not figuring out it's related to their son they move houses and the haunting continues at the new house.  Eventually they call a psychic and find out that their son is what's haunted, not the house.

The biggest difference between Insidious and Paranormal Activity is that Insidious actually pays off all of the tension and building up with a finale that is, quite frankly, glorious.  I think the makers of Insidious just decided to pander to my movie nerd desires because this movie has everything I want in a horror film: tension, atmosphere, a frightening depiction of the afterlife, nerds, and even some comedy.  The ending is something that I will not spoil here but suffice to say it doesn't do what Paranormal Activity does and has a real, semi-conclusive ending.

This is the problem with a good horror film, I don't want to spoil any of the scares or story points, and as such I don't have as much to say as I'd like.  Insidious has an incredibly well done atmosphere and the entity(s) are incredibly well designed and very striking. If you like horror movies, go find a copy of Insidious (it's on Netflix) and watch it.

8.8/10