Insidious (2011)
Directed by James Wan
A family discovers that dark spirits have invaded their home after their son inexplicably falls into an endless sleep. When they reach out to a professional for help, they learn things are a lot more personal than they thought.
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32 films that influenced Insidious
What critics say influenced Insidious
There’s been a good bit of criticism that Insidious is too like Poltergeist (1982).
What used to be so beautifully easy in The Haunting or House on Haunted Hill or The Innocents became a little bit tougher in The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist — and nowadays you have to break out the video camera if you want to dazzle a young audience with your Paranormal Activity and your Grudge-inspired phantoms.
Whannell’s script ties together a number of tropes that will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Exorcist (1973), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Amityville Horror (1979), and Poltergeist (1982), but let’s be honest: We don’t go to horror movies for originality.
His 2007 thrillers “Death Sentence” and “Dead Silence” failed to impress, so he rejoined “Saw” writer/actor Leigh Whannell in this formulaic, clichéd venture into the spiritual world that evokes memories of the far-better “Poltergeist” (1982).
Insidious isn’t a particularly original film; the fingerprints of other movies are all over it, especially Poltergeist (it doesn’t just ‘homage’ movies.
A fairly well-done, old-fashioned child-imperilment/haunted-house movie until it falls completely off the rails and starts playing like Phantasm II (but not in a good way), James Wan's jump-scare-athon Insidious is chiefly influenced, for what it's worth, by Poltergeist , though it also references that "Twilight Zone" episode where a girl falls into a parallel universe.
Elements recall The Exorcist and just about every haunted house movie ever made.
Insidious is littered with elements of genre classics (Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Evil Dead) and nonclassics (Ovidio G. Assonitis' Beyond the Door) alike, but by the horrifically unshocking end of the film you feel as though you've just watched a lamest-hits reel of lesser genre fare.
So the pleasant surprise when you actually watch "Insidious" is that it turns out to be a moderately effective suburban-family creep show, majorly in debt to "Poltergeist" and "The Exorcist" and capturing at least a little of their spirit.
This latest shocker from the original “Saw” buzzers, director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell , flaunts an adequate measure of the duo’s trademark borderline-camp humor while channeling as if by Ouija board the unholy likes of “The Exorcist” and “Paranormal Activity” (whose director Oren Peli serves here as a producer).
Whannell has come up with one slightly different idea which he lays on top of themes taken from everything from "The Exorcist" to "The Orphanage" to "Paranormal Activity" while director Wan cops visuals from "The Shining," "Poltergeist" "Drag Me to Hell" and even that 'ghost' from "Three Men and a Baby."
What we have here, as in Paranormal Activity (whose director, Oren Peli, is a producer here), is not a haunted-house movie but a haunted-person movie.
The early portions of the film slightly resemble a far more stylish take on the Paranormal Activity (2007) approach, which is not surprising since that film’s director, Oren Peli, is one of this film’s producers.
They're joined by the folks behind "Paranormal Activity," including writer and director Oren Peli, on hand as producers, and "Insidious" owes more to that film than the torture-porn of "Saw."
This is repetitive, and a bit reminiscent of Paranormal Activity , the superlative horror film directed a few years ago by Insidious producer Oren Peli, but it works at creating a damn nice feeling of the creeps, primarily because Wan and cinematographers David M. Brewer and John R. Leonetti do a fantastic job of bathing the Lamberts' two homes in such icy gloom, trumping up the dark wood and underlit corners so egregiously that it would be corny if it didn't' create such a forbidding atmosphere.
It takes some time before the influence of those films is felt, since it opens more like "Paranormal Activity" - that movie's director Oren Peli's name is listed conspicuously as producer.
This latest shocker from the original “Saw” buzzers, director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell , flaunts an adequate measure of the duo’s trademark borderline-camp humor while channeling as if by Ouija board the unholy likes of “The Exorcist” and “Paranormal Activity” (whose director Oren Peli serves here as a producer).
When we see, e.g., the haunted attic and desperate recourse to a priest (The Exorcist), the spectral sisters in the corridor (The Shining), the unhinged séance (Drag Me To Hell), the disembodied demonic footprints (Paranormal Activity), the comatose patient who seems only to be half asleep (Patrick), the body of a hypnotised man used as a portal by the dead (Two Evil Eyes), and the photographs exhibiting an eerie clairvoyant power (The Grudge, Shutter), Leigh and Whannell are not merely 'paying homage to as many films as they can', but throwing us apparent interpretative breadcrumbs that lead viewers - especially, but not exclusively, genre savvy viewers - in so many different and conflicting directions (how exactly do you get from The Exorcist to Patrick to Shutter?) that all this hyper-allusiveness conjures up its own kind of uncanny.
Whannell has come up with one slightly different idea which he lays on top of themes taken from everything from "The Exorcist" to "The Orphanage" to "Paranormal Activity" while director Wan cops visuals from "The Shining," "Poltergeist" "Drag Me to Hell" and even that 'ghost' from "Three Men and a Baby."
Anyone who thinks a haunted house movie by the creators of "Saw" would be a gory and grim affair clearly aren't aware of director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell's love for classic horror, specifically their admiration for two classic examples of the haunted house horror sub-genre at its best, "Poltergeist" and "The Shining."
References to The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, The Others and more horror classics can also be found.
Fueled by smart sampling -- " Poltergeist ," " The Shining ," " Paranormal Activity ," " The Amityville Horror ," " The Exorcist " -- it feels like the Wan/Whannell brand of shivery fun may be heading toward something substantially terrifying.
(That soundtrack is a masterpiece of sonic manipulation, instrumental screeches, clangs, and dissonance that make this one of the best horror soundtracks since Kubrick tapped pre-existing work from the likes of Ligeti and Penderecki for The Shining.)
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Which brings to mind an AARP version of the poster of Lori Petty in Tank Girl combined with the prominent facial feature of a morose elephant.
What used to be so beautifully easy in The Haunting or House on Haunted Hill or The Innocents became a little bit tougher in The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist — and nowadays you have to break out the video camera if you want to dazzle a young audience with your Paranormal Activity and your Grudge-inspired phantoms.
Insidious is littered with elements of genre classics (Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Evil Dead) and nonclassics (Ovidio G. Assonitis' Beyond the Door) alike, but by the horrifically unshocking end of the film you feel as though you've just watched a lamest-hits reel of lesser genre fare.
Even the famous shock in 1942's Cat People when the bus hisses into the frame would've been diluted if something like it had pierced the soundtrack every ten minutes.
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You see Herk Harveys blanched ghoul from Carnival of Souls, pass the scampering little It from Dont Look Now, then enter an entire wing devoted to Poltergeist, with Dalton the imperiled child stuck between worlds, and an intervening medium who guides us through the rules of the supernatural game.
First, let's applaud Saw co-creator James Wan for trying to break away from the geek trick violence of his debut (he isn't responsible for the nastier, gorier and stupider Saw sequels) to deliver an old fashioned spook-house chiller.
A throwback bit of gore-free horror, it's directed by James Wan, who made a name for himself by writing and directing the 2004 film that was the first in the "Saw" franchise (which gets a blink-and-you'll-miss-it nod here).
Director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell may have made the original Saw, thus unleashing a seemingly ceaseless franchise on the public, but they aren't entirely about torture porn; their previous collaboration was 2007's fatally silly Dead Silence, which also went in for old-school creeps and creaks.
Wan is best-known for Saw , which had as much atmosphere as Insidious, but more graphic horror elements.
For their third film, the duo behind the classic shocker “Saw”—the director James Wan and the screenwriter Leigh Whannell—return to their indie roots, with a low-budget, quickly produced shock fest about the haunting of an affluent couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) and their young children.
With “Saw,” Australian director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell created arguably the most successful horror franchise of the last decade.