Movie Review: Insidious

Yza watched this movie about a month ago and wanted me to watch it right after. However, due to reasons not really important to detail here :), I was only able to watch it a week ago and wasn’t even able to finish it. Finally, this week, I finished the remaining half. Below is our personal review of this movie.

This is a spoiler-free review.

The Plot

A family moves into a new home, looking to start a new life. The couple, Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne), start to adjust to the new house, slowly unpacking day after day. One night, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), the eldest of the 3 kids went up to the attic out of curiosity, climbed a ladder to reach the light switch, slipped, fell to the ground and hit his head. The next day, Dalton didn’t wake up anymore, The doctors said he was in an unexplained coma.

Three months later, with Dalton still in a coma, strange and disturbing things start to happen around the house. As Josh and Renai try to look for answers to drive away the evil spirits, they also discover the real condition of Dalton.

Our Thoughts
: My officemate, Billi, made me watch this movie because she claims that it's the scariest she's ever seen. So I asked E to download it. Hello, if it's that scary, I wouldn't dare watch it in the cinema. Besides, it wasn't showing here in the Philippines yet at that time. After a couple of weeks, I finally decided that it was time to watch it. Billi and Ann have been having nightmares and I really wanted to know why. The thing about me is that I easily get scared, but I still watch horror movies because I get so curious about what the story's all about. So yeah, curiosity always wins. Also, I'm a very jumpy person and E couldn't understand why I would still get kurat when we watch movies when the sound effects/camera is obviously building up towards the moment.

So anyway, Insidious definitely lived up to the hype. Personally, I enjoyed the story/concept more than anything. I guess it's scarier knowing that it can really happen to some people. The scary parts probably would have been 10x scarier (and I would have screamed louder) if seen on the big screen, and had I worn both sides of my earphones and not lowered the volume (yes, when I get scared, I not only cover my eyes, I most importantly block off the sound. Haha, I am such a wimp.)

I like how it's close to reality and that it's not trying-hard to be scary. Well, except for the latter part, where they show "the further" and where the chase scenes turned a bit corny.  The ending twist was kind-of typical of horror movies, but I'm still glad that they did it. It made up for the corny scenes.

All in all, it's a good horror movie that left bad images in my head - making the night time creepy and making midnight bathroom trips impossible for a couple of nights.

Looking back though, I think Paranormal Activity made me lose more sleep than this one :) Or maybe I'm just braver now.

: I love the concept and how the movie explained the phenomenon. I love the ending and how I wasn’t able to anticipate it. But, I’m not a fan of the movie in general.

The first half of the movie was not that bad. If you are looking for a lot of anticipation, suspense and sudden scares, then it definitely gives you a lot of that. However, I was just not hooked enough to want to know what was happening to the point that I stopped to watch midway and decided not to finish it.

But, good thing I did finish it a week after to understand what the phenomenon was all about. If you think about it, it’s a bit creepy knowing that it can really happen to anyone. But despite that, I really didn’t like the execution of the latter part of the movie. After everything was explained, the succeeding scenes started to become a bit exaggerated for me. The scenes came off too corny that I wasn’t really scared anymore, especially the “fight scenes”. I wasn’t even sure where the 2 other siblings were during the whole second half of the movie.

If you are a fan of creepy, scary, heart-jumping scenes, then I would say this movie is something you might want to watch. Just don’t expect too much from the latter part.

The Rating
 7 / 10

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