INSIDIOUS
Aesthetically, Insidious operates at the level of a decent high school video project. The story transpires mostly in uncomplicated close-ups and medium shots; nothing apart from the most basic visual information (faces, relevant props) registers in the frame or takes hold in your imagination. The sound design, so important to establishing tone in a horror movie, is even less inspired: every potentially scary moment is embellished with an over-amplified shock chord or sound effect that pounds the content into you like a blunt object.
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These discoveries don’t register as plot twists so much as ideas tossed in to keep the story moving. (My colleague Ignatiy Vishnevetsky recently challenged himself to catch up with all seven Saw movies in a week; he told me it was like watching Days of Our Lives for horror buffs, which seems an apt comparison here as well.) This approach to storytelling can be an asset in low-budget cinema, as evidenced by the non sequitur plots of Roger Corman or Russ Meyer. Some of their sensibility emerges in Insidious when the expert’s clownish assistants reveal that their “paranormal tools” are simply modified old toys. The sweet nostalgia of this reminded me of Michel Gondry’s comic fantasies (The Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind), but unfortunately there are no other moments like that in the movie.
