Face-Off: Insidious vs. Sinister

Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert
Rose Byrne as Renai Lambert
Ty Simpkins as Dalton Lambert
Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier
Leigh Whannell as Specs
Angus Sampson as Tucker
Barbara Hershey as Lorraine Lambert
with Phillip Friedman as Old Woman
and Joseph Bishara as Lipstick-Face Demon

Aside from SAW, James Wan hadn’t exactly done much notable work in the horror genre. There was the forgettable DEAD SILENCE and the DEATH WISH-style DEATH SENTENCE with Kevin Bacon, but the man didn’t really start making a name for himself until INSIDIOUS. Wan pulled out all the stops and had a blast with the haunted house genre. There’s a lot being thrown around in this movie, and Wan embraces it by jumping right in and finding creepy ways of exploring the scares. There’s the scene with the demon dude standing by the baby’s crib, veiled by a…veil; there’s the ghost guy whispering over the baby monitor; the visual terror of Lipstick-Face and; throwing the terrifying old woman at us right from the start. He gets a little over-the-top in the final act, as his sensibilities for creepy-looking people get the better of him, robbing the movie of tension and diving into the odd and strange. But we can credit INSIDIOUS as the movie where Wan really started to embrace his gut and show some fearlessness.

A perfect, cookie-cutter family moves into a new home, exhibiting the normal behavior of the typical American family trying to have it all. So sweet. But after the son, Dalton, has an accident, and later falls into a coma, their perfect life starts goes through crazy twists and turns as they start to experience visits from ghostly beings. They soon learn this is because Dalton’s weak body is being pursued by demons of another realm, who want to inhabit his body for *ahem* insidious reasons. As the family sees worse and worse beings come into their life they have to seek the help of medium Elise Rainier, who will help them get their son back before it’s too late. Dun, dun, dun!

The script jumps right into the scares, putting Dalton into the coma early and letting the ghostly events come into the home. The story becomes very boilerplate, as the family tries to defeat the supernatural occurrences going on in their house. Things get more weird than creepy by the end, as the hectic events stop the movie from being eerie, but you have to hand it to writer Leigh Whannell and Wan for trying to do nothing but craft a fun haunted house flick.

A Walk Through the House at Night

A Perfect Family

Dalton’s Attic Experience

Dalton in a Coma

Voices on the Baby Monitor

Demon by the Babies Bed

House Alarm

Renai Attacked

New Home

Tip-Toe Through the Gardens/Little Dutch Boy

Lip-Stick Face Demon

Enter Elise

The Ritual

Chaos in Dalton’s Room

Entering The Further

Fighting the Demons

Dalton Comes Back

The Old Woman Wins

The majority of the scares in INSIDIOUS are very well-crafted and come about as often as you could want. This is probably because having so many creepy characters in play and the eerie premise of them being after the kid’s body and soul allows for the horror to come from so many different angles. While some other movies try to start slow, INSIDIOUS always goes for the big scare, and it can really get the adrenaline pumping…before it gets too silly that is.

Like some of the freakiest scenes, INSIDIOUS’ music from Joseph Bishara (also the Lipstick-Face demon) is meant to elicit big scares from the audience with invasive, forceful compositions that put an exclamation point on the atmosphere. We hear this early on when, during the opening scene with the old woman, there’s an almost violent violin (cello?) sound that screeches up and down like nails on a chalkboard. Then there’s powerful use of the piano, given a thudding sound to emphasize certain scares. The music certainly leaves an impact when paired with certain scenes, making more low key scares much more effective. In terms of modern horror, INSIDIOUS boasts an impressive score.

INSIDIOUS’ story is all about this other dimension filled with ghostly figures called The Further, the baddies of which spill into the real world. From the old woman, to the dude in the trench coat, and all the way to ol’ Lipstick-Face there’s no shortage of demon creepies to terrorize this family and give you nightmares. Not all the baddies are a scary sell, with several plain, white-faced specters not having the same kind of impact as the more malevolent figures. This is because some of the more dominant figures are filmed in a more horrifying way and are given more weight, whereas some figures are just thrown at the scene for the sake of strangeness or a brief jump scare. Not that twin females in Victorian garb staring at you from around a corner isn’t scary.

Golden Schmoes:

Nominated:

Best Horror Movie

Praise

Rotten Tomatoes: 66% (Audience Score: 62%)

IMDB: 6.8

Metacritic: 52 (User Score: 7.3)

Money:

$54 million domestic ($97 million global)