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There is an audience for every movie. I don’t enjoy Twilight, but I understand that the films have a fan base, and I understand who that fan base consists of. I can’t fault a movie simply because I am not the intended audience. Sure, I can say a film is bad, but that just means it’s bad in my eyes. Keep this in mind when I say Insidious is a bad movie.

To be honest, part of the reason I’ve made such a bold statement is because bold statements get folks reading! They get blood boiling and opinions flowing. I desperately want someone to happen upon this post and explain all my issues away. The other reason why I dubbed it a bad movie is because I truly feel it is. Let me address this in sections and, again, let me preface this all by saying: This is my opinion, and how I viewed/interpreted the film. There are plenty of smarty-pants bloggers, reviewers and podcasters whom I truly respect that felt differently. *Ahem*

There will be spoilers…

My main issue with Insidious is not the lack of fright. So, let’s just get all that out of the way early on. No, I did not find the film scary. Let me tell you why. There is tension in the unseen and unknown. Fear is bred in the mind of the viewer. Give us just enough to get our imaginations running wild and we will scare ourselves by placing our own nightmares into the tale unfolding before our eyes. Wan and Whannell gave us too much at every turn. Throughout the first 1/2 of the film, they consistently set up heart pounding scenarios: that awesome shot of the boy dancing to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” the flame faced demon appearing behind Patrick Wilson, the man pacing feverishly outside Rose Byrne’s window. But each time they pushed it just a bit too far. We end up seeing the boy up close as he pops out of cupboard. We later see the demon, which I believe is credited as “Lipstick-Face Demon,” way too much and too close up. And, as discussed in Matt’s review, the man Byrne sees pacing eventually runs up to her and hisses. These choices are the things that pulled me out of the film and kept me from ever being scared.

To the film’s credit, the use of sound was very effective. Everything from the family’s burglar alarm screeching to the black and red demon’s fingers creaking worked well and was truly unnerving. So thanks, Insidious, for some top notch sound design. That just wasn’t enough as the story and visuals never made me feel tense enough to appreciate the atmosphere.

As a “scary movie” Insidious left me wanting. But my main issues with the film are far beyond its inability to illicit a yelp. The writing was terrible. I almost feel bad saying it! There is part of me that can’t stand to deliver such a harsh opinion on something so subjective. Let me say that the idea was interesting; little boy astral projects and demons try to inhabit his abandoned body. Cool. It’s the execution of this idea that I found problematic.

The dialogue was painful and unbelievable. As are the characters responses to situations. For example, in the final act when Wilson is outside his body, his mom (the always awesome, always hot Barbara Hershey) is just kind of looking at her son with detached concern. The man is breathing erratically and appears to be experiencing cardiac trauma and she’s simply sitting there with her hand over her mouth. Not to harp on the subdued reactions to unspeakable horror too much, but even when the “ghost hunter” played by the fab Lin Shaye, is flailing around in her gas mask, no one seems too concerned. At the close of said gas mask scene, I though she was dead, but the 4 other people in the room barely acknowledged her slumped form. If they aren’t worried, why should I be?

The family’s 2 other children exist for no real reason. (No, wait, you need the baby so you can have creepy baby monitor action and the other boy has to say something vague and unsettling about something walking around at night.) There are story elements that seem half fleshed out ie: Wilson suddenly staying late at work and Byrne “hoping things are different” in the new house. The characters seem to have a cold distance that is never explained and only peripherally alluded to. The result is that they are both unlikable. So there you have it, 1 kid in a “coma,” 2 kids barely on screen, and 2 parents with no personality or warmth. Why do I care what happens to anyone?

It’s almost contradictory to say there were character elements that seemed unexplained only to segue into a rant about the film over-explaining everything. Alas, it did. Every aspect was spelled out to the viewer. Not only does coma boy astral project, he goes to a place called “The Further.” Ugh, why does this place have a name? And why does it have to be explained to us in detail. And then why do we have to see a super literal representation of it. The exposition was over the top and just another example of the film going past the point of scary or intriguing.

This is like writing a grocery list and I could truly go on and on. Since mere days before this viewing I sat down and wrote my love letter to Poltergeist, all of Insidious‘s short comings were even more pronounced. This film is filled with static, weak, uninteresting characters and cartoonish scares. Rose Byrne’s character is an insult to female characters in horror and the film’s writing made me feel stupid.

I am not the right audience for Insidious.