Review: Insidious

Rose decided to skip the make-up today

I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot or scares, so I’ll try and keep this somewhat spoiler free. As the film begins we are immediately greeted by chilling opening titles featuring a montage of greyscale scenes showing sinister forces at bay in the house. We are then immediately hit with the blood red, gothic style title, Insidious. I’m not normally swept away by title sequences but these were striking, and before the film even begins we have a sense of the tense and atmospheric nature of the film. Early impressions would have us believe this is an Amityville Horror for the 21st Century or someone more cynical may say is a rehash of Paranormal Activity. The film certainly starts that way with boxes being moved around, demonic voices, etc. but attempts to become slightly more with the ‘haunted child’ element, this idea is met with mixed success. Throughout Insidious, we see some genuinely terrifying things, some of which caused me to gasp, for example we hear a noise and Renai runs upstairs to her baby’s room – we are immediately struck by the shot of the baby standing  up in it’s crib, but our attention soon gets diverted to a dark figure standing behind the child, which soon vanishes – this is just an example of the effective type of scares that the film has to offer.