INSIDIOUS

Rating: 4

The most resonant horror films, the ones that stand the test of time, are the ones that speak most directly to some aspect of reality that is magnetically identifiable to the viewer. Such is the case with INSIDIOUS, a smartly conceived film by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the founders of the SAW franchise. While SAW’s sequels sadly devolved into a series of more and more hysterical and self-involved gore porn without Wan and Whannell at the helm, INSIDIOUS is something that uses little blood, but is terrifying on a subliminal level that gore cannot approach. It does more than explore the well-worn idiom of a haunted house. It also considers the concept of a haunted family, one with repressed memories, and the sort of deep, dark secrets that invariably come out, wreaking havoc on the innocent.

In this case, it’s Dalton (Ty Simpkins), a kid who, instead of being spooky, is adorable without being precocious. Yet, when his family moves to a new house with enough room for him and his brother, it’s not Dalton who senses something is wrong. It’s his mother, Renai (Rose Byrne), who notices peculiar things that aren’t necessarily supernatural, but certainly aren’t right. Books that are in the wrong place, a box that is where it shouldn’t be, and the sound of a draught that raises her hackles. All of it, of course, shrugged off by Dalton’s father, Josh (Patrick Wilson), a dedicated family man and sole breadwinner when Renai takes time off to work on her music. It means she’s home alone with the kids, and far more susceptible to the change in atmosphere that convinces her, not Josh, that the house is haunted. Such concerns are temporarily overshadowed by Dalton’s accident, a tumble that leaves him with a bump on the head, and later, in a comatose state, though one that the doctor’s can’t explain. Renai, alone with a comatose son, the other in school, and peculiar things of a less explainable variety happening, becomes frantic enough to convince her skeptical husband that they need to move. The new house proves no refuge, in fact, the situation deteriorates quickly leading to those family secrets being revealed, as well as the true nature of the thing being haunted.

Director Wan and writer Whannell keeps things quiet at first, the creepy kind of quiet where the ticking of a clock creates an unbearably tantalizing tension as the audience awaits with bated breath for the next sinister sign to manifest. By the time that first unquestionably supernatural event occurs, there is still enough lingering suspicions about Renai’s relative state of mind, ministered to by Josh’s grim-faced but supportive mother (Barbara Hershey), to keep things off-kilter. By the time, the medium (Lin Shaye) has been introduced in the form of a nurturing earth-mother type with a steel backbone and a soothing voice, preceded by her colleagues, a pair of bickering but effective, paranormal investigators in business attire (Angus Sampson and Whannell himself), Josh’s objections seem less sensible and more the result of willful ignorance, raising new questions about what is or isn’t going on.

If there is one flaw in the film, it is Wan’s decision to let the camera stay a few seconds too long on one of the manifestations that may or may not be tormenting the tight-knit nuclear family, the manifestation with the very red face and the very long claws. Less would have been more, but it’s a minor point in a film that makes Tiny Tim’s rendition of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” one of the scariest songs ever recorded, and a gas-mask at a séance a much needed moment of comic relief that then becomes a surprisingly effective tool for maintaining a mystery within the subsequent torrent of revelations. Whannell deftly mingles every parent’s worst nightmare, with those of the more traditional horror variety, slowly, deliberately, upping the ante as the film progresses until a payoff that is a thundering crescendo of Grand Guignol and subtle, lingering terror.