A family discovers that dark spirits have invaded their home after their son inexplicably falls into an endless sleep. When they reach out to a professional for help, they learn things are a lot more personal than they thought.
Insidious – Film Review
Published September 1, 2022
Movie Details
The first time I ever saw James Wan‘s Insidious was when I was about eleven years old, and I vividly remember being absolutely terrified of it. I had it on the TV set in the downstairs living room while my mom was doing something in the kitchen. She usually doesn’t tend to focus on movies or shows when she’s occupied with something else, but when Insidious was on, it was an exception.
She would occasionally walk into the living room just to see what was going on in this extremely zany and haunting film, and she also expressed worry that I would have nightmares that night if I kept watching it. Long story short, I finished the movie that night. And while I didn’t have any bad dreams, I did know right then and there that Insidious was one of the best horror films I’d ever seen.
Watching it all these years later, it’s shocking to see just how much it holds up and feels like a modern-day horror film. Wan is easily one of the best directors in the entire horror genre, and you can really feel his style and passion seep right through here. This is an unrelentingly bleak film that never lets go of its extremely tight grip on you.
For about two hours, Wan thrusts you right into the Lambert family’s struggles and it feels scarily real and, interestingly, plausible. There’s never an over-the-top scene that makes you lose belief. The world of Insidious feels grimy, haunted, and lived in in all the best ways.
One of the things I love most about Wan’s films is that they almost never feature jump scares, or if they do, they’re jump scares that are actually important. There’s no fake-out scare. There are a few jumps in this film, but they are all done superbly well and they’re all things that we, the audience, and the characters should be scared of, thus it works.
Huge praise also needs to go to Leigh Whannell for penning such a sharp and gritty script. In my opinion, Whannell is one of the most underrated writers in the horror genre. He doesn’t seem to be all that famous which shocks me because every single time he comes out with a new script, it’s almost always terrific.
Insidious is one of the most impressive horror films of the 2010s, serving as a genuinely bone-chilling tale of one family’s struggle to save their son from evil.