I Scream We All Scream For Insidious

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I'd been indecisive over whether I was going to bother with James Wan's new horror film Insidious for awhile. I hated Saw a whole lot (although in retrospect it seems positively delicate compared to its ever more abysmal sequels) and that - along with Stacie Ponder's brutal take-down of Dead Silence, his evil ventriloquist dummy movie - was keeping me from being enthusiastic, even though the cast was made for me. Patrick Wilson! Rose Byrne! (I love Rose Byrne, by the way.) Barbara effin' Hershey! How could I not want to see a ghost movie starring these people? Well last night rolled around and there were still tickets on sale to its early screening at Lincoln Center (it comes out on April 1st here in the States) so I said to hell with it. Let's do this thing!

And man am I happy I went! Not only is the film something worth celebrating, which I will get to in a moment, but first things first Patrick Wilson was in the house! If I'd known I would've sat closer to the stage so my pictures could've come out better but here are a couple blurry ones I got from my spot at the back:


I've been in the presence of Patrick Wilson once before, when I saw him do a benefit performance of The Normal Heart last Fall - lemme tell you what he does not disappoint in front of you. He is every inch The Prom King you expect. When the Q&A ended he stood and spent a couple minutes with his most famous asset facing us and I almost fell down the theater stairs, so paralyzed were my eyes.

Anyway! The movie is good, you guys! Really good, as these things go. It treads well-worn territory - the similarities in its basic outline with Poltergeist are acknowledged enough and played around with enough that it was okay with me, how much they were lifting. Tree branches against the little boy's bedroom window? Check! Creepy grinning monster under the bed? Check! A parapsychologist who comes in with a team of two dudes and finds herself in over her head? Check! (It helped that it's memorable weirdo Lin Shaye playing the psychic, because she's awesome.) And the slam cut to the film's title brings to mind Drag Me To Hell (which makes me happy to think of, so that's a good thing).


What the film has going for it is an unsettling appreciation for the bizarre and unexpected scares. What I mean is, this thing's scary! There are four or five images in it that I can conjure up in my head and creep myself out immediately. Classic images that you will turn to your friend afterward and say, "Do you remember the [blank]?" and you'll both scream and go, "AHHH!!! Oh my god!" and then laugh and it'll be awesome, I promise.


I'm having a really difficult time right now not telling any of these parts but that would be a monstrous theft, ruining any of them for you. I'm probably pretty lucky that I didn't watch a single trailer for this film so they were all new to me. I just this second went and watched the first trailer and one of them is in there, so I'd say to avoid the trailer if you can. And avoid the doubts about the director, if you have them. James Wan, you have my apology and respect. Good work.


And to those of you who complain about modern horror films being huge violent gore-fests or there being too much CG or there not being a sense of suspense anymore, then you should see this film. It's incredibly old-fashioned. There is zero gore in it. There are only a couple of instances of obvious CG and they're not obnoxious at all. The music's a little overdone at a couple of moments when I wish they wouldn't have given the stings their shriek to give oomph to a scare, but even that's old-fashioned in a way so it was fun. And there are scenes where they know enough to let the silence speak for itself that work wonderfully.

Overall I am pleasantly surprised by Insidious, and I'm looking forward to going and seeing at again on April 1st. Then we can all talk about it and say, "Oh my god that part!" and it will be a wonderful time, I promise.
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