El Rich Goes to the Movies: Insidious

Last night, I went to the cemetery. As much as I wanted to go and gaze upon Vampira’s grave in the embrace of Mother Night’s dark arms, I couldn’t because I had to go and watch Insidious.

Actually, when I first was told about this screening, I really didn’t care about the movie at all because the poster for the film looks like The Good Son. You know, creepy little kid doing evil stuff but no one believes it because they’re cute bla bla bla. We’ve all seen that kind of film about a million times before and they are pretty tired.

I also had no idea what this film was about but let me tell you, it is not what you think it’s about. Without getting all SPOILER-Y on y’all, let me tell you what’s up.

So. Mostly this film is about some scary ass shit that happens to this family over the course of a few months after they move into this bad ass house. I know. It sounds boring, right? BUT IT’S NOT. Just hold on.

The Rents: Renai & Josh Lambert (Rose Byrne & Patrick Wilson) looking concerned.

After moving into this crazy huge house, one of their kids, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), falls off a ladder in the creepy attic that no one had any business being in anyway because it looks like a space only a lonely Goth child could love. So anyway, the kid falls off the ladder and then starts screaming and the parents run to go get him and then everything is all better.

** BTW, like for the first 20 minutes or so, there is a baby CONSTANTLY CRYING like it has colic so if you aren’t into that scene at all, you might want to show up late BUT DON’T. **

Moving along. So in the morning, the family is all doing family stuff (which is totally foreign to me because NO ONE HUGGED ME AS A CHILD) and the Dad goes to wake up Dalton. You know how you aren’t supposed to fall asleep after you fall and hit your head? Yeah. Well that’s because you can get a boo boo on your melon and possibly not wake up, kinda like what happened to this kid. 🙁

Dalton in a coma, I know, it’s really serious.

The doctor people cannot explain what’s happening and why Dalton has slipped into a coma. Months go bye and then we are brought to the present day with Dalton still in a coma but having home care. This is when all the weird stuff starts to happen (and by “weird stuff,” I mean WTF JUST HAPPENED? kind of stuff). A lot of what this film does is the “HOLY SHIT, LOUD NOISE!” thing and they do it ~FLAWLESSLY~

A pivotal scene in the film happens late at night when Josh is sleeping on the couch and Renai is upstairs in her straight-out-of-the-Ikea-catalogue-bedroom. They are having seperate times because whatever (it’s not important). The scene involves this dude that looks like Glenn Danzig and it gets all crazy up in there and well, the family just up and moves to a new house.

** Let’s birdwalk right here. Look. This house that they are in looks all expensive as f**k. The dude also drives like, a Range Rover or something fancy. IT’S A CAR. They aren’t cheap. They just up and move to this other house because weird shit is happening all the time. The wife doesn’t work and Josh is a teacher. A teacher. We all know they don’t make any money to just be up and moving into multiple bad ass houses.**

So now the family has moved and guess what? Whatever the shit was scaring the fuck out of them in the previous house HAS FOLLOWED THEM. Great.

Since things aren’t getting any better, Lorraine Lambert (Barbara Hershey) enlists the talents of these two dudes that look like they work for The Geek Squad or something nerd-tastic.

Tucker & Specks (Angus Sampson & Leigh Whannell)

These dudes look for evidence of the paranormal with their home crafted gadgets. If they find enough weird stuff going on, they will call their boss lady, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye).

SRS BSNS FACES.

Turns out that the Geek Squad dudes find some shenanigans happening and Elise is called. She investigates and finds out that there is this spooky version of Darth Maul hanging out over Dalton and then tells the Lamberts what’s going on.

Pretty much the bad dude in this movie, except he has hooves for feet so you know his ass is evil. Oh but the Insidious dude doesn’t have horns or a cape.

Turns out that Dalton is a “Traveler.” To Elise, this means that he can astral project and his soul has gone far away into “The Further” (Sounds like a NIN album to me). All these evil people are around him because they want to use his body to cross back over into our world and she knows how to bring Dalton back.

The Dad gets all crazy because he thinks that Elise and her Geek Squad are trying to “exploit” the Lamberts and has the team familiarize themselves with the left hand evacuation proceedure.

Josh has a break down one moment later on and calls the team back and then shit gets crazy cray. I’m going to stop explaining the film here because I don’t want to spoil it for you but here are some interesting things that happen:

Elise goes looking for Dalton in a gas mask that looks like she’s getting ready to hit the vaporizor.

We get to see lots of ghosts that should probably be in a Panic! At The Disco video.

There really is a light that never goes out (but it probably should).

In summation, my mind was totally blown by this movie. There are some pretty questionable, I’m not believing this acting moments and weird camera work in the beginning but that all fades away as this movie makes you jump during some crazy scenes. It’s like this film captured all the fun of a haunted house, mixed it with a pretty interesting plot, and then totally makes your head explode at the end when you are all

WHAT? WHAT! WAAAAAT?!

Above all, this film is fun and actually made me do this a lot:

NOW GO SEE IT!