Movie Review: INSIDIOUS

Should have been called… InSILLYious.    

Unfortunately I actually PAID MONEY to go see this movie in the theatre.  Thankfully I had a group of high school kids in the row behind me which kept the laughter flowing through-out this excuse for a possession movie.  Being from the same jokers who were behind the wastes of film known as Paranormal Activity I should have known this was going to be nothing more than quiet boring scenes followed by creepy-music make you jump scenes.  But honestly… was I supposed to be afraid of a guy with a red-painted face sticking his forked tongue out at me?  Boo, look at my tongue!  Ahhh-no.  I laughed through most of the movie.

The action starts out pretty quickly.  We have ourselves a nice little family.  Mom, Dad, two boys about the same age (my guess would be around 8ish maybe?) and throw in a baby for some annoying screaming and crying.  As the previews show, one little boy is about to get his world all fucked up.  He falls down in the attack, sees… something, and the next morning BAM it’s coma-time!  Well, according to the doctor’s its not really a coma since there’s no brain damage.  Apparently this kid’s just really really fucking tired and won’t wake up.

Then crazy shit starts to happen.  With Dad at work all the time (and lying that he has papers to grade and staying out until midnight) Mom and baby are the ones getting tormented.  Hearing angry voices over the baby-monitor and seeing creepy ghostly boys and girls running through her house Mom finally breaks down and tells Dad its time to move, the house is haunted.  (This was their new house and how they afford to move again so soon on only a teacher’s salary, seeing that mom is home taking care of the kids and working on her music is probably the biggest mystery of this movie.)  So now we’re in a new house and everything is peachy right?  Wrong.

It only gets worse.  More noises, creepy ghost looking people, and even more screaming baby.  Finally mother-in-law steps in and brings in a… medium?  Apparently mother-in-law had a dream where she saw this evil thing in the corner of their kid’s room and when she asked what it wanted, it oh-so-creepily pointed to the boy.  Time for the medium to step in.  She informs the family that, 

“It’s not the house that’s haunted.  It’s your son.”    

Oh and did I mention she uses a gasmask?  That’s right; our medium uses a freaking gas mask to commune with the spirits.  Tweedle Dumb has one of the ends hooked up to headphones so he can hear what she’s saying and write it all down. After the making contact with the boy and a few pages of scribbled “Help me” its game on!

 She now has the explanation for their son’s not-really-a-coma coma.  He’s a “traveler”, in other words he can astral project, a talent he inherited from good ‘ol Dad.  (Apparently Dad was haunted by a not-so-sweet old lady when he was kid and she has the pictures to prove it.)  But the boy has gone too far, for too long and has gotten lost in what she calls “The Further” *bum bum bummmmm*.  Since his spirit is wandering, all those other meanie spirits who are wandering have started fighting over his body.  And the one winning is uber-mean.  So mean that he’s all black with hooves, a red face, a forked tongue and pointy tail.  Seriously are you trying to tell me THE devil is trying to inhabit the body of this little boy?  *facepalm*

Thank goodness for the medium’s two cohorts, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dipshit.  At least they provided some comic relief with their constant competition for who can be top nerd.  

Now its up to Dad to save his son’s soul.  He has to astral project into “The Further” and find his son’s spirit, and then bring them both back to their respective bodies.  Away we go!   After revisiting his old haunt “creepy old lady” and finding his son, they start to make their way back.  But oh no, everyone else in the real world starts getting attacked by the evil spirits who apparently now are close enough to have physical bodies and start filling the house chasing after them all.  Dad tells his son to go on ahead while he deals with creepy old lady in the mirror.  The little boy tries to frantically find his way back to his body while fighting off the devil creature.

Suddenly Dad wakes up, the boy wakes up, and all the attacking spirits disappear.  Hoorah!  But alas, something is amis.

Right away I assume that the devil-thing was what really got into the body of the boy.  But the medium knows better.  She snaps a picture of the Dad and sees its really… creepy old lady in Dad's body!  Dad/creepy old lady strangle her to death and just as Mom sees the camera and dead medium, Dad comes up behind her and … the movie ends.

So…. The little boy was fine.  He got paid to play a sleeping kid in a bed the whole time.  Oh wait, he had once scene where he got up and with one hand threw everyone across the room.  My bad.  Honestly I was hoping that there would be some decent effects or at least a cool death scene… but noooo.  All I had was jumpy teenagers in the row behind me, a guy with a painted face sticking his tongue out, and a gas-mask toting spirit medium.