I've been waiting to re-watch this one. I wanted to give it a watch before watching the sequel, since I couldn't quite remember this one too clearly. And this time, I watched it with Cathy.
What makes Insidious a remarkable horror movie is the budget. Around 1.5M. To compare, The Room was shot for around 6M. I'm not comparing the scripts, either. I'm talking about just the quality of the picture, the editing, the acting. Everything about Insidious looks very professional. The direction, the editing, the photography, the music. From the appearance, the effects work, I would probably peg the budget at closer to 15-20M.
The movie is a strange one, and it makes it hard for me to unreservedly say that it's great. But I find myself wondering if the weaknesses make it more effective for more viewings.
The main problem is how disjointed the movie is. Once the medium comes into the movie, it seems to drastically change the direction of the movie. It changes from a very effective haunted house-type movie into a possession-type movie. On the second viewing, I didn't mind this too much, since I saw it coming. Since this is an event that happens about halfway through the movie, it makes sense, but… maybe the problem is that the change in approach feels like it abandons everything that the audience was thinking about the first half.
The second problem is possibly related to the first. For some reason, there's nowhere near enough danger in the second half. We get a few more creepy images. We get a quick chase. The most memorable weirdness happens during the last act, but there's also some material that doesn't live up to our expectations. The demon becomes less scary the more we see of him.
This disjointed quality makes it easier to forget how the movie fits together, which does make it a bit more interesting for repeated viewings.
For research purposes, I suppose that the horror in this comes from the son being in peril.
I look forward to watching the second one soon.
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