INSIDIOUS, Back to The Old Formula of Horror Movie

From the time the title came up, this movie has pronounced its style. With the loud, annoying, screeching sound delivering the start of the story, it is obvious that director James Wan wished to bring the old horror movie style back to life. Typical sound effects, combined with shocking scenes and dark setting enhance the effect of real horror. Not to forget how he used smoke to create The Further (the "next" realm).

The story is about a couple (Patrick Wilson, Watchmen and Rose Bryne, Wicker Park) with three children
who were just moving in to their new house. Suddenly their oldest son, Dalton, didn't wake up from sleep and was pronounced in comatose by doctors. Along with that, things started to move by themself and sightings of what they believe as ghosts began to appear. Moving to another new house wouldn't help since Dalton still didn't wake up and the supernatural phenomena still happened. Then they start to realize that what happened to Dalton was caused by some kind of evil.

It's glad to finally hear about Rose Bryne again, since her appearance in Troy (2004) as Briseis (the one slept with Brad Pitt, if you forget). In Wicker Park and Troy, she looked young and pretty, but in Insidious, she looked older and thinner, perhaps because the character she played was a stressed housewife, or perhaps, time just took away her beauty. Both her and Patrick Wilson delivered a good play, but none of them was outstanding.

Hands clapped for the make-up and design of the ghosts and the setting of The Further that made us felt like actually traveled alone in there. Wan presented the cliche as the tool of horror. There's one scene when we thought nothing would happen because the music and the scene was just typical (when Renai opened the shade covering the shoes, looking for a boy ghost), and for a second we felt it's right, and suddenly the ghost came out shocking us. The ending was predictable, but hey, horror movies should end exactly like "that" or else it's merely a family drama.

If you remember Drag Me To Hell by Sam Raimi (the director of Spider-Man), he tried the same formula. He used all the elements of old horror movie just to make us laugh at the end because of silly and disgusting scenes. Insidious didn't try so hard to scare the audience, but it's just in the right amount.

I need to warn you about this. These kind of movies shouldn't be watched in home with standard sound instrumentation. The power of the horror is in the sound effect, so unless you watch it in movie theatre or home theatre, the scary atmosphere will go down to nothing.

"Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're gonna get."

That's what Forrest Gump said, since he lived on what "his momma said", and that he fortunately jumped from one adventure to another, from Vietnam to China, from playing football to playing table tennis. Yet, this meaningless quote can be true, but not all of us has that kInd of wonderful experiences, and so some of us make their own adventure and pour it into books, comics, and yes, movies. And thanks to them, the others (including me) experiencing their adventures by watching movies, drowning deep into the stories, travelling from Middle Earth to Planet Pandora, from the realms of gods with shining armors to the darkness of Hell, and for about 2 hours, we forget about our annoying girlfiriends and stressing jobs.

That's why movies are made, actually.

In order to let you pick the right movies to watch (and not risking your day watching horrible movies that make your life more miserable) this blog is dedicated to discuss about movies, old or new. There maybe some spoiler to the stories, but I'll be careful by writing "SPOILER ALERT" in that part. You can also request me to review a movie, and hopefully, I have watched it or I'll be willing to watch it. Give me any suggestions regarding the blog and I'll be happy to make it better.

So, that's it. Thank you for visiting this blog, enjoy, and, as John McClane said:
"Yippie-kay-yay, motherf***er!!"

-OD-