"Insidious" Loses Audiences

 Providing more thrills than shock, "Insidious" leaves audiences behind, as it never fully delivers on the screams it could produce.  The director of "Saw," James Wan, and the producer of "Paranormal Activity," Leigh Whannell, teamed up to create what could be a bone-chilling thriller but results in a lukewarm fright fest filled with creepy quick cuts and loud noises.

As the movie begins, the audience is introduced to the Lambert family, consisting of Patrick Wilson ("Watchmen") playing the father Josh Lambert, and Rose Byrne ("Damages") playing the mother Renai. The family seems like a pretty average family who moved into a brand new house, but right from the get-go something seems to be a little off. After one of their sons, Dalton, falls into a coma, the couple is put through extremely tough times, dealing with a comatose kid and strange appearances from ghosts. Renai finally convinces Josh there is something wrong with their house, but after they make a quick move she discovers the appearances are getting worse and more frequent. They soon find out that the house was not haunted at all, rather for some reason these ghosts are attaching themselves to the family.

The strong atmosphere of the movie is created from the beginning and never drops. The audience is always left tense, waiting anxiously for whatever will jump out or flash on the screen to scare them. The lingering feeling of something not being told or the fear of something terrible happening helps the audience connect and care for the outcome of the characters journey through this mess.

Wilson and Byrne definitely help in this film, putting their best into the characters, allowing them to become real when they could have come off as one-dimensional. Although the atmosphere is strong, the shocks are not, and after awhile the film becomes predictable and drawn out.

Ghosts can be scary, but if they are constantly being thrown in front of the camera and explored further than they need to be it starts to become routine and dull. At one point Josh interacts with some of the ghosts and it starts to get annoying as none of the ghosts seem to have any attributes besides blinking, smiling and staring.

When a movie is approaching two hours in length, predictable plotlines and smiling ghosts grow more aggravating than frightful. However, once the movie becomes predictable, it is as if the filmmakers realize this and quickly toss in another twist in an attempt to top the previous one.

The last half of the story reeked of "Poltergeist," but it would not have been such a bad thing if the first half matched up with the ending. It is as if Whannell wrote a story about possession and another about astral projection, then decided to mash them together instead of creating two different movies with it. The scares in the beginning are cheap but almost each one got someone in the audience, so that goal was achieved. Unfortunately, the ending spirals out of control with weak encounters and ghosts who start strong, but end up goofy and laugh-inducing.

"Insidious" lacks the attachment most thrillers or horrors have to audiences. Those movies make it hard for viewers to be by themselves at night, or walk past a dark room, but this film does neither.

Although the very end saved the movie from being absolutely terrible, it also sealed the fate of this film not being a memorable one.

"Insidious" receives a 6 out of 10.