From director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell (the duo behind the Saw franchise) comes their latest horror outing, Insidious. While I’m not a fan of Saw, I LOVED Wan’s last film – 2007’s brutal Death Sentence. And yeah, Dead Silence is a pretty damn fun piece of camp. With Insidious, Wan and Whannell present a ghoulish haunted house flick that relies heavily on the jump-out-and-scare-you technique. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And Wan is really really good at making doors creak and floors squeak. The first two-thirds of the film are solid with plenty of tension, ominous atmosphere, and some genuine scares. I admit it – I jumped a few times.

In the final chapter the film, sadly, the film treads heavily into some goofy shit. The demons/ghosts/whatever go from being agents of terror to just annoying set pieces that don’t respect personal space. It sucks because honestly the first two-thirds are great. A lot of reviewers are comparing it to Poltergeist – especially Insidious‘ otherworldly realm known as The Further. Remember in Poltergeist when that the mom goes into the Other Side to bring back Carol Anne (waaalk into the liiight)? Insidious has the same deal, only the young Dalton’s father, Josh, travels into The Further and we unfortunately go with him. Shit gets real hammy from then on.

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