Insidious (2011)

It's not the House that's Haunted.

Look at that poster, creepy, right?  Anyways, I have never seen insidious before, I don't even remember seeing any trailers, but I'm always open to suggestions on what movie to watch next, and everyone told me to watch Insidious, and that it would scare the shit out of me.  I'm not the easiest person to scare, or maybe I am, either way I like scary movies, and the scarier the are the better I like them.  I guess you could say I like being scared?  With that being said, on to the movie!

It opens on a shot of a boy sleeping in bed, it pans through the house, and we see a figure in the window.  We turn the corner, and there's a creepy looking old lady standing there with a candle, we close in, then fade to black as opening credits roll.  We see a women in bed, Renai, wake up to the sound of her husband, Josh, snoring, she gets up and heads downstairs.  It appears that they have moved into a new house, which is never a good thing in horror movies.  Renai starts unpacking boxes, and putting books on shelves, when she runs across a photo album, and starts looking through it.    Her son, Dalton, comes downstairs because he can't sleep and doesn't like his new room,.  In what has got to be the cutest thing I have ever seen happen in a horror movie, Renai and Dalton are wearing the same pajamas.

Dalton looks through the photo album with her, and ask why there are no pictures of Josh.  Renai says he never really liked to have his picture taken, that seems a bit fishy, doesn't it?  The baby, Callie, starts to cry, and Renai says it's time to start breakfast.  Later that morning, Renai is trying to juggle, Dalton, her other son, Foster, and Callie, while Josh gets ready and leaves, helping with nothing.  Foster needs a bowl to eat his breakfast, but she can't find one, she goes to look in the living room and sees the books she put on the shelf earlier have fallen off.  After she gets the kids to school, we find out that she plays piano and is a singer, until Callie starts crying.   Upstairs, Renai gets Callie back to sleep, and hears a noise, and goes to check in the attic, but nothings there. 

Later that night Dalton is playing in the hallway, and the attic door opens by itself, and he wanders in.  Earlier we saw that one of the rungs were broken on the ladder used to turn the overhead light on, and of course which rungs does Dalton step on?  Yup, the broken one, and he falls, and bumps his head, he doesn't make a noise, but sees something to the right of him, and starts screaming.  Renai and Josh run up to the attic and he doesn't tell them what he saw, just that he fell and that his leg hurts.  They tell him the attic is now off limits and they all go to sleep.  The next morning Renai sends Josh to wake Dalton up, but he wont wake up, they take him to the hospital and we find out that he is in a coma.  The doctor, Secarz, says all his tests are normal, and that he doesn't know why Daltons in a coma. 

3 months later

 

Yes, we just took 3 month leap into the future, and Dalton is still in a coma.  However, he is at home in his room, and a nurse is telling Renai how to put a feeding tube in.  Renai try to play the piano but can't, she starts to hear heavy breathing on the baby monitor and then a voice mumbling, before the voice say 'I want it, I want it NOW!', Renai runs upstairs, Callie is fine, and nothing is there.  Later that night Renai is putting Foster to bed, when Foster tells her that he is scared of Dalton, and that he wants to trade rooms, because he doesn't like it at night when Dalton walks around.  Ok so the boy in a coma is walking around at night, yeah cause that's not creepy at all.

 

That night Foster hears noises and closes his door, then crawls back in bed.  Reani is telling Josh about the incident, with Callie and the voices, when banging is heard, Josh goes to check the front door, and nothing.  Callie starts crying and Renai heads to her room, when she enters she sees a man in Callie's room, she calls for Josh, but by the time Josh gets there the man is gone.  A few seconds later they're alarm starts to go off, Josh goes to check on the alarm, while Renai grabs Callie and Foster and head into Dalton's room.  Downstairs Josh goes to check on the alarm, and the front door is wide open, Josh's dumb ass leaves the door open as he goes to check out the house.  The alarm goes off again, and Josh heads back to the door to close it. 

 

(I'd like to point out Billy from Saw in the background of this scene!)

 

The next morning we follow Josh to work, as a teacher, he calls Renai to tell her will be late, because he has to grade papers, I call bullshit.  We then get weird flashbacks of the opener through Josh's perspective.  The nurse is back at the house, and tries to fix the bedding, but Renai tells her she can handle it, she then sees a bloody handprint on the bed sheet, and calls Josh.  Josh arrives home at 10:30, and they argue, Renai tells Josh that the house scares her and that she needs him, but he is too busy trying to avoid the situation to give her support.  I'm gonna stop for a second to tell you that I feel that this is going to take a Paranormal Activity turn, and have a backstory of Josh's family having issues, like Katie and Kristi did.  Back to the movie. 

 

 

 

Renai tells Josh to handle the bloody handprint by himself, and walks away.  Later that night Josh is sleeping on the couch, and we start to get a flashback of the opener again, but this time with a bonus of a hallway a lit with candles.  We see Renai wake up screaming, and a figure walks past the window, Renai finally sees the figure, and calls for Josh, but Josh is still sleeping on the couch.  The figure pacing outside the window appears inside and lunges at Renai, she scream and Josh comes running.  Of course the figure isn't there by the time Josh gets there, Renai tells him she saw something and doesn't want to leave here anymore, and they move.

 

Next time we see them they are moving into a new house and Josh's mom, Lorraine, is helping.  Lorraine sees a picture with Josh in it, and starts acting weird and commenting that she's surprised Renai got him to stand still for a picture.  Later, Renai is cleaning up, and she puts on a record, and heads out to take the trash out.  While she's outside, the record cuts and starts playing a different song, in a window Renai sees a boy dancing, when she gets inside the boy is gone, she starts looking around the house for him, and freaks when he jumps out of a closet at her.  Awhile later Josh gets home to see Renai talking with a priest, and Lorraine is also there.  The priest leaves, and Lorraine tells them that she knows what's happening is real, and that she had a dream about it last night. 

 

 

 

In the dream, she was in the new house, and she walks into Dalton's room and there's someone in the corner, she asks it what it wants and it points at Dalton.  Lorraine sees something behind Josh, and freaks out, we start hearing things crashing in Dalton's room, and they all head there.  The door is locked, after a few hits, Josh knocks it open, and the entire room is destroyed, and Dalton is laying on the floor. Lorraine says she knows someone who can help, if they want help.  We then meet the help, Specs, Tucker, and Elise, but Elise is not there, now this movie has been good so far, but in meeting Specs and Tucker, my faith in this movie has faltered.

 

 

 

Tucker starts using some equipment to seek out the entity, he has this one gadget that looks like one of the toys you played with when you were little. You know the one that looked like binoculars, where when you put a picture disk in and clicked the button a new picture was shown. His toy has different colored filters of infrared to see the entity's.  Tucker doesn't spot anything in Foster's room, but he uses it by Dalton's room, and twin girls appear, and he says it's time to call Elise.  The next day Elise arrives, and we find out her and Lorraine have been friends for a long time.  Elise starts walking around the house, in Dalton's room she sees the red figure that Lorraine saw behind Josh, and tells Renai and Josh that Dalton is not in a coma, but is Astral Projecting.  She says that Dalton has been Astral Projecting, which is similar to an out of body experience, they leave their physical body and travel to different places in Astral form.  Elise explains that its not the house that is haunted but its Dalton that's haunted, and he doesn't know he's traveling because he thinks it's a dream, and that he's been doing this since he was very young.

Elise explains that he has traveled to far away to a place she calls 'The Further' which is a world beyond our own but all around us that is filled with the dead, and is not meant for the living.  The entity's know that he is gone, and are trying to get in Dalton's body, she says there are good one and bad ones, like Red Face which is bad.  Elise tells them that the red thing is close to getting in to Dalton, Renai ask if there's something they can do, Elise says there is something they can try.  Josh disbelieves and tells them all to leave, I'd like to point out that the entre time Elise is telling them about Astral Projecting, we wound get flashes of Josh's face, and not in a good way, like he knew or had experienced this before.  Josh goes into Daltons room, and sees pictures that he had been drawing before going Astral, and the pictures are of Red Face and a red door. 

 

 

 

Elise, Specs, and Tucker return to do some type of summoning for Dalton in his room, Elise wears some sort of gas mask, which is creepy.  The equipment is set up, which includes a camera with flash, Specs will be translating, and Tucker is taping on a video camera.  They start, nothing happens at first, but they finally reach Dalton and he tells them to be quiet or Red Face will come, he starts screaming 'help me', then Red Face comes, and says to Elise 'you fucking whore, I'm going to rip your innards out' and Elise slumps over.  All of this was done by us reading what Specs was writing in a notebook, plus the flash from the camera kept going off, quite an awesome scene.  As Elise slumps over, Daltons monitor flat line's, and Dalton is next to Josh in the middle of the circle, Dalton touches the table and everyone flies away from the table.  Keep in mind the camera flash is still going off during all of this. 

Dalton flings the table away, and all the entity's start to appear, Twins, Dancing Boy, and Pacing Guy, Elise tells Red Face to leave this vessel, they turn the lights on, and everything stops.  Later on Tucker tells Specs that all the cameras they had going caught nothing, except one that has Red Face on it.  Someone knocks on the door, and it's Lorraine, Elise called her after the session was over to come over.  Wait, who the fuck is watching Foster and Callie then?  Lorraine tells us she knew to call Elise because she had to call Elise before about Josh, I knew it!  Lorraine says Josh used to have night terror about some old women, aka the opener, she pulls out pictures that all have the old lady in them, which now explains why he doesn't like his picture taken.  Turns out Astral Projecting is genetic, and that's how Dalton can do it.  The only way to bring Dalton back is for Josh to go to 'The Further' and bring him back, Josh agrees.  Once he Astral Projects, Josh ends up in a dark place, with a lantern, he sees Dalton, but he points to the old house, Josh enters the old house calling out for Dalton. 

 

 

 

A Bride walks past him and heads upstairs, he follows, and hears crying and sees a women in the corner, he then hears a little boy laugh, and follows him.  Back downstairs, the floor is covered in fog, Josh walks into the living room, and sees a family, none of them are moving, we hear a gun be cocked, and we head to the kitchen where we see a girl with a gun sitting still.  Gun Girl disappears, then we hears shots being fired,  and we head back to the living room, to see that Gun Girl has shot the family, Josh freaks and heads back upstairs.  Upstairs the attic door opens, and he heads up, he sees a red door, just like the one Dalton drew, at the far end of the attic.  Right before he gets to the door Pacing Guy appears and they fight, back in the real world they can see him struggling with something, Elise tells him he's stronger than they are because he is alive.  Josh overpowers Pacing Guy, and opens the red door, where he enters into the candle hallway, he finally finds Dalton, but Daltons chained up. 

Dalton stares into the distance, and we see Red Face looking down at them, and then he appears next to Josh.  They fight for a second, then Josh grabs Dalton and he leaves the house and heads back into the darkness, back in the real world the house starts shaking, Elise tells them that Josh has Dalton, but she can't wake him up, that he needs to find them.  All the entity's start circling around Josh and Dalton, Elise tells Renai to start calling out to Josh, Josh hears and follows.  The house stops shaking, and Specs and Tucker go to investigate, Specs sees a drawer open and goes to close it and a hand comes out, and freaks back to the living room.  Elise tells Specs and Lorraine to go check on Dalton, Tucker, who is still investigating, freaks over something we don't see.  In the living room Elise tells Renai that they are crossing back over in to the real world, all the entity's start appearing in the real world, and Elise tells Tucker to shine the light on Josh. 

We see Josh reach the new house, but he can't open the door, he finally gets in through the kitchen and stops, he tells Dalton to go and that he is right behind him.  Josh sees Old Lady in the window and tells her to leave him alone, while this is happening Dalton is fighting Red Face.  We see both Dalton and Josh wake up, 10 bucks says one of them is not the real one.  Theres a nice little reunion with everyone hugging, happy to be a family again.  We see Lorraine, Renai, and Dalton in the kitchen feeding Dalton, Specs and Tucker out by the van loading equipment, and Josh and Elise cleaning up in the living room.  Josh is looking at the pictures of him as a kid with Old Lady, and tells Elise he hope he can forget this time too, and hands her the pictures, she looks at him strangely, and grabs her camera to take a picture of him.  Josh flips out at her, and strangles her to death, Renai hears the noise, and goes to check, and sees Elise dead. 

 

 

 

Renai start running around the house trying to find Josh, screaming 'where are you' but he disappeared, back in the living room she picks up the camera and gasps as we get a flashback from Elise's perspective.  Elise saw that his fingers were old looking, and takes the picture, we see that he is the Old Lady, Old Lady lunges at Elise, and we go back to Renai.  Back to Renai, we hear Josh whisper Renai's name and we get a back glance of her, then see a hand on her shoulder as Josh says 'im here', she turns to face him in horror, and we fade to black.  After the credits roll we see Old Lady holding a candle, she then proceeds to blow it out.

 

The End.

 

 I'm a little disappointed by this film, don't get me wrong I liked it quite a bit, it was a good movie.  However, I was told this was gonna be really scary, and to be honest Sinister was much scarier than this movie.  It just didn't live up to what I was expecting after hearing all this hype about it.  Also I know I bashed Specs and Tucker at first, but they grew on me, and remind me a lot of the GhostFacers.  Tell me what you guys think down below in the comments or hit me up on Twitter (@ohmyskittles13) 

Hope you all have a great night!