So it's Halloween night with a few friends and one of them has a collection of horror movies we have never watched before (or even heard of). We decide to watch Insidious because one of my buds had heard that this was a frightening film. Although the film did have a few good early scares, the ending was just a cheap cop-out.
I kind of feel like this film is a combination of Poltergeist and The Paranormal Activity series. The beginning starts with a typical white family moving into a new house. They have two children and of course a baby. The dad's a teacher and the mom is into music, yada yada. Do I need to go on? The family begins to have weird occurrences such as certain items going missing, weird voices through the baby monitor. When eventually their oldest son falls into what is seemingly a coma. The mother (played by Rose Byrne of Bridesmaids) believes that it is the house that is causing this coma but when the family decides to move into a new house. They discover it is their son that is haunted. BUM BUM BUM!!!!
The few things that worked for this movie were the subtle scares at the beginning, where you can see movements through your peripherals. Where the movie begins to lose its haunting settings is when you start to see the actual ghosts and realize what happened to Darth Maul at the end of Star Wars Episode 1. The more you see of the ghosts the less frightening it becomes.
The ending or even midway through the film takes a complete turn and makes it seem like two films were tied together. It ends up being some fantasy adventure towards the end where the dad has to enter a spiritual realm to find his son. It's a little to Pumpkin Soup for the Teenage Soul for me. You never get attached to any of the characters to really care about what is happening. Overall this film is mediocre at best. I would say watch this film until they move into the new house, THEN STOP! It may make the film more haunting.
