Insidious (2011)

Written by: Leigh Whannel
Directed by: James Wan
Featuring: Leigh Whannel, Barbara Hershey, Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne

Insidious is Wan and Whannel’s ode to Poltergeist, minus the cocaine and Tobe Hooper.

Have you ever noticed that Steven Spielberg, who produced Poltergeist and Tobe Hooper, who directed it, look really eerily similar? Many people think Poltergeist was more like a Spielberg film than a Hooper film, and here’s my theory why: Tobe Hooper and Spielberg looked exactly the same when they were making the film, so when Spielberg walked around, everyone thought it was actually Hooper who was directing, but Hooper wasn’t probably on the set that much (see “cocaine”). Anyway, it’s just a theory.

Okay, then: tell me which is which?

Insidious begins with a perfectly normal family — pretty mom (Rose Byrne), handsome dad (that guy from Hard Candy and Watchmen), and two boys about four months apart in age, along with a baby sister — moving into a huge house in what appears to be Hancock Park, which is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Now, this is odd because the dad is a public high school teacher who makes somewhere in the neighborhood of about $32,000 a year, and the house is worth about $2 million or so and costs about $6,000 a month to rent. So, we already have some funny business going on. How do I know its Los Angeles? Well, the palm trees in the back of every shot were my first clue.

None of you reading this can afford to live here.

The family moves into this new huge five-bedroom mansion house, and as mom unpacks she looks at dad and says, “I hope things will be different in this new house.” Wait. Was there some ghost shit happening in the previous house in which they lived? Were they fighting all the time? What the hell is she talking about? We’ll never know. They never tell us. We feel cheated. Mom keeps unpacking, and the boys who are the same-age-but-not-twins play and explore their house. Eventually one of them falls down and knocks himself on the head. He’s okay! Except the next morning, he’s out in a coma Natasha Richardson-style. The doctors have no idea what caused the coma — other than the knock on the head — because, like, there’s no actual brain trauma.

Fast forward into family drama. Mom spends all her time taking care of coma boy, who has now moved back home and lies in bed all day on machines. Dad is a jerk and spends all day until 10 p.m. at work “grading papers” so that mom can raise the remaining children all by herself. Mom has no time to work on her budding music writing career. Wait, did I say “music writing career"? Yes, I did. In what is a completely weird moment, we see mom working on really bad songs on the piano. Did no one tell mom she was a horrible songwriter? She’s straight out of a rooftop in Coyote Ugly — just hand her a Casio. Don’t worry, we only see mom agonizing over the music for about 60 seconds, and then we never have to hear it again.

Is her wallpaper yellow?

At first Insidious seems like it might be some kind of Yellow Wallpaper-inspired story of how the feminine mystique drove Mom nuts and she started believing her son was haunted by a ghost. I mean, mom did give up her youth, her freedom and her “career” so that she could raise the children of an ungrateful husband. But soon it is clear that ghostly things are happening. There’s a miraculous switch from “don’t be silly, honey” to pure belief when a psychic (played by Lin Shaye, getting real roles again) shows up to confirm the haunting. Her input involves the convoluted history of an old woman and astral projection and dad’s hidden past. Then Barbara Hershey shows up as his hot mom and says that, yes, an old women in a wedding dress tried to possess him when he was a child, just as spirits are now trying to possess his own child.

By the way, what’s with all old ladies being scary to James Wan? All of them seem to resemble Mrs. Havisham, as if he has some Charles Dickens obsession. You can see the same scary old woman, down to the dress and hair, in his previous horror film, Dead Silence. It’s strange. What’s also cute is the Saw puppet-drawing on a chalkboard in the background in a scene where Dad is staying late at school. That’s just like when you can see Freddy’s gloves in Evil Dead II, or the Fangoria magazine in the back of Ash’s car in Army of Darkness, or how everyone in Adam Green’s movies is named Joe Lynch, or how ShockTillYouDrop.com appears in a computer screen in The Hills Run Red. You get the point. Nice puppet!

In the netherworld, which is called The Further, the other side, etc., the soul of the comatose little boy is wandering lost, and the psychic tells mom and dad that if they want to bring him back, they have to go into the netherworld and get him. Lin Shaye is pretty bland as far as psychics go, and her sidekick paranormal investigators ham it up with some really awful banter that’s supposed to be funny, but it just ends up being painful. I wanted a psychic like Sylvia Brown or that dead midget from Poltergeist; instead, we get Lin Shaye, calm and sweet.

Wan also has some really deep fear of puppets to go along with his fear of old ladies in wedding dresses. Puppets pop up as an ongoing theme, first in Saw, then in Dead Silence, and now in Insidious. The demonic entity attempting to possess the comatose boy likes to sit at some kind of astral antique record player/sewing machine/nail sharpening device while listening to ragtime music and watching his puppet collection dance. Satan likes to light red candles, hundreds of them, and decorate the netherworld with arty antiques too. Why exactly does Satan want to be a 9-year-old again, after putting so much time and energy into decorating and into his puppet collection?

I don’t want to make it sound like this isn’t good. It’s a good movie. It’s not great. I did feel some genuine tension. I did jump at least three times (granted, I’ve been really nervous lately). Far be it for me to question Wan’s fear of Mrs. Havisham, or puppets, or how a high school LAUSD teacher can afford to rent a mansion, or why the wife/mom thinks she could have some kind of musical career. But I do think it is important how the film begins as a movie about a mom and a family, with a tense marriage and an injured child, and explores how grieving parents deal with the trauma and then abruptly shifts and drops all interest in the mother and her personality and focuses solely on the dad. The film makes him a hero in the second half, sending him into the netherworld that we felt cheated out of in Poltergeist. Don’t get too excited — the netherworld is just like ours, except foggy, and Satan has a really great apartment there, and there are lots of old women in wedding dresses. But, like Poltergeist, demons threaten the traditional nuclear family unit and only a parent’s love can save the child. This time the parent is dad, and the demon is a huge, black, enveloping thing, actually far more frightening in computer form than when a real actor takes over.

Also, you will learn to pay attention to the things your child draws. Don’t just tack that shit up on the wall without looking at it, okay? Be a real parent; look at the drawings. Notice the details. Then tack it up on the wall. You’ll be happy you did when a giant black thing swoops down and screws with your whole family.

Rating: (3 out of 5):