Film Review: Insidious

Jessica Rabbit gave me Mixi; Fuck you Jessica!

Hollywood Producer #1: 'Let's call it 'Insidious', yeah, because that sounds kind of haunted and shit'.

Hollywood Producer #2: 'What the shit does 'Insidious' mean, Dude? That sounds awesome!'

Hollywood Producer #1: 'I'm pretty sure that it means good return on investment in French'.

Hollywood Producer #2: 'OK sweet; that sounds perfect! I'll give that guy from 'Hard Candy' a call; he's got this rep for only getting involved with good projects, so by association this film will also be a huge success, even if, on the face of it, the production appears to be a total critical failure'.

Happy with my shiny face.

Hollywood Producer #1: 'Great - so who should we get on board to play the wife?'

Hollywood Producer #2: 'How about approaching Rose Byrne? She's got that whole 'vague melancholy expression' thing going on, which is, like, so insidious'.

Rose Byrne: so insidious.

Hollywood Producer #1: 'That is SO true. She's, like, totally insidious'.

Patrick: 'Why do you always look so sad, Rose?'
Rose: 'It's kind of my thing, y'know, like how YOUR thing is that really shiny face?'
Patrick: 'Oh, cool. That's so insidious'.
Rose: 'I know! Right?'

And so to 'Insidious', a word which actually means: 'Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects'; a mixed metaphor then, for both the artistic integrity and the box-office performance of 'Insidious' as a whole. 

Advocates of the silver ring thing explain why virginity is, like, so insidious.

We have a husband-and-wife team (Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne respectively), who live in what appears to be a haunted log cabin of near-ecumenical proportions. Rose spends alot of time sitting at her piano, listening intently to baby monitors, and singing in a mournful voice, while Patrick busies himself with falling asleep at his desk and buffing his face. 

I said YOU REALLY NEED TO GET OUT MORE Rose!

It's never made entirely clear why Rose is so resolutely fucking mournful all of the time; although there is mention made of her hard life AS A STAY-AT-HOME MOM. Yeah, it's pretty tough shopping at Target and sitting on a piano stool 24/7. Keep your chin up, Rosie! We're praying for you babe.

Eventually, Rose tires of listening to the baby monitor and starts a passionate affair with a nearby ghost.

Considering that she has three kids, Rose doesn't seem to get much in the way of housework done, although when Patrick comes home from his job as a UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR (good job, casting agents!) he often says things like: 'Well done Sweetie, you did a great job', and 'Don't worry sweetheart, things will get better soon'. Don't encourage her Paddy, she didn't do shit. She's been watching Judge Judy since 8AM.

Uh..good job?

Maybe the P-Man is just trying to boost Rose's confidence, because they seriously have a pretty sweet life going on from what I can see. To be 100% fair to Rosie, at one point she does have to (drum-roll please)......take the trash out. Well shit, I can see now why she be bitchin' and moanin' the whole damn time! 

As if taking the trash out once in a period of several weeks WASN'T BAD ENOUGH, Rosie also has to contend with the fact that some fuck keeps hiding her sheet music.  Now, I'm not exactly sure why Rosie needs her sheet music, because the only reason she and Patrick moved to the new house was so that she could write some new music. It's not like she needs to go over her old material or anything. FOCUS ROSIE! Stop looking to the past!

P: OMFG the trash is full again!
R: How is that POSSIBLE? I just took it out like three weeks ago! Motherfucker!

Rose's travails with her missing sheet music aside, it's difficult to see why this couple are so down all the time.  Of course, there is the fact that their son is in a coma. That's right; a coma. He wasn't in a coma at the start of the movie, but then again neither was I.

Busy astral-projecting.

So their little boy (Dalton), is in a coma. Except that it isn't a coma, and the medics just can't figure out what's wrong with him. I'm pretty sure that if Dalton's Consultant Paediatrician spent more than ten seconds around Rose, he'd totally get it. A 'comatose' Dalton returns to the log cabin so that Rose can bore him to death. Sorry, I meant so that Rose can 'nurse him'. And that's when all the weird, haunted shit starts kicking off; the first weird thing being that Darth Maul turns up and starts bumming around the dining room table; I took this to be a sign that Patrick had sought solice from his wife's incessant musical mediocrity in the closest sexually-available neighbourhood figure...from Star Wars. At least it wasn't Ja-Ja Binks though, right Rose?

Patrick and Darth Maul: their eyes met over a comatose 7-year-old.

We weren't planning it; it just sort-of happened. 

It's pretty tough when you find out that your husband has been sleeping with a fictional character from the Star Wars franchise, but Rose and Patrick decide to work through it. Trouble is, more and more ghosts start making an appearance, including one which appears to be Tiny Tim from 'A Christmas Carol'. You'd think that Dickens would at least have been given a brief mention in the credits, but N-O-T-H-I-N-G. 

God bless us, everyone.

That hat is a BRAVE look there, my friend.
It takes a real kick-ass white boy to carry that off.

Rose and Patrick decide to hire first a disinterested priest and then a comedy medium to bring Dalton back from the Neverworld. Sorry; the Neverwhere? The NothingWorld? The LazyEnding? The WasteOfFifteenBucks? 

Here to help.

The Medium tells Paddy and Rosie that Dalton is a gifted Astral Projectionist. Oh. Well that make total sense. We can just roll the credits right here then, because that explains E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. No more clarification needed here! The Medium also tells Paddy that he is also a gifted Astral Projectionist, which makes sense because Astral Projection is a dominant allele notoriously passed on through the male gene. Good.

Has anyone seem my hubby?
Dickhead bailed on my ass.
Reckon he been creepin' wit that ho' Loretta.

Inexplicably, Miss Havisham from 'Great Expectations' turns up. And they thought that Dalton was lost! Miss Havisham seems to have a bit of a thing for Patrick, and the two of them really hit it off. Just to be clear, by 'hit it off', I actually mean 'she repeatedly tries to murder him'. 

Patrick goes to the Neverland ranch to hang out a bit and save his son and shiz; but before he goes, the medium warns him 'not to draw attention to himself'. So Patrick, once he arrives at the Neverland ranch, immediately starts SHOUTING DALTON'S NAME AND GENERALLY DRAWING ATTENTION TO HIMSELF. Patrick wanders up to all the Neverland ghosts which look generally bad-ass and threatening, and asks them if they have seen his son. I'm not being funny, but basically Patrick does the complete shitting opposite of what the Medium tells him to do.

I'm a professional.

By a stroke of complete luck, Paddy runs into Dalton and they both try to escape Neverland together. It's looking pretty good, and they are both about to escape when Paddy decides that now is definitely a good time to kick back and jus' chill for a bit. He tells Dalton to go on without him, basically for no apparent reason at all. Good.

So, uh..she has to wear the gas mask 'to talk to the spirits', right?
Which educational establishment did she qualify as a medium from again?
Oh, that's right; none.

Dalton leaves his father to hang out with Miss Havisham, and runs into Darth Maul on the way. Now you'd think, wouldn't you, that Dalton running into the murderous, sociopathic, homicidal maniac demonic presence (which has its heart set on killing him and taking over his body) would be a BAD thing right? But, uh, but it isn't. And Dalton makes it back to the real world without incident. Don't hold your breath for an explanation, btw, because there isn't one. 

Sup.

Patrick's back, too, and he's as shiny as he ever was. He's also possessed by the demonic spirit of Miss Havisham, but he still looks pretty hot so plus ca change, right? Miss Havisham should probably take it easy for a few days, y'know, blend in a little bit so that nobody realises she has possessed Paddy's body and abandoned him to die in the Neverworld. So she does this by....immediately murdering the medium. I know where she's coming from, though, because the medium took her picture when she wasn't ready and that's enough to piss anyone off.

So what have we learnt from 'Insidious'?

• Hollywood hasn't got a dictionary, and even if it had one, it would consider it surplus to requirements.
• Patrick Wilson stays shiny, even after a trip to the third realm and an episode of demonic possession.
• Astral projectionists are playful explorers but it occasionally gets them into trouble.
• Psychic mediums are, without exception, elderly women.
• It isn't necessary to come up with new, original, exciting concepts for movie monsters when you can just regurgitate any ol' shiz from previous cinematic and literary triumphs. Regurgitation+shiny-faced-actor+spooky kid-PROFIT.