My Favourite Film this Summer:- Insidious

I’ve seen a few films this summer, but none of them quite appealed to me as much as Insidious did. I’m an avid fan of horror and thriller movies, so insidious was a sure fire hit. The film opens by showing a series of black and white photos of the house where most of this film is set, and different rooms in the house. Then, in these photos we see things moving, but nothing moving them, which already gives us the impression that the film will be about the paranormal. Our story begins with the humble Lambert family, who have just moved in to the afore mentioned house. The family consists of a mother (aka Renai), a father (aka Josh), the oldest child Dalton, his brother Foster and a baby girl.

When Dalton starts to explore the house, he finds his way into the attic and tries to climb a broken ladder and falls onto his head. He wakes up and sees something in the attic that causes him to scream. His parents run to the attic to save him and everything seems fine, until the next day when Dalton fails to wake up for school, as he slipped into a coma for unknown reasons, as there was no brain damage.

The film skips ahead 3 months, and Dalton is still in a coma. That’s when the encounters with the paranormal start to happen, such as someone being heard on the baby monitor, the house alarm going off and the front door suddenly opening and finding a bloody hand print on Dalton’s bed. Renai then starts having dreams about the demons, and when she awakes, someone is walking around outside her window. She looks and then it walks into her room, and tries to grab her. All of these demonic occurrences build up suspense so much that you just can’t wait to see what will happen next.

The family decide the best thing to do is move house. Renai is left in the new house with the comatose Dalton, when she steps outside ‘tiptoe through the tulips’ starts playing, and she sees a little boy dancing, and he runs away, at this point in the film I was questioning if she was on hallucinogenics.  Josh’s mother then comes to the house after a bad dream in which she sees and talks to a demon who says it wants Dalton. This continues to build suspense.

The family call some modern hi-tech ghost hunters, who search the house for paranormal presences. Upon seeing female twins in dresses in the hallway (a lot like the shining) they call for help. They call a woman who claims to be a medium. She starts to look around the house and communicates with the demons. She says ‘it’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s your son’. She informs us that Dalton can travel to the astral plane, and he can’t find his way back. This is what’s causing the demonic appearances because they want to enter his body. Josh doesn’t believe her, and kicks them out. He sees Dalton’s drawings of his astral projections and realises he was completely wrong. The ghost hunters are called back to save Dalton.  Josh finds out from his mother that he too could astral project and has to do it to save Dalton.

I enjoyed watching this film, because it is excellent at building suspense, and the film contains many twists and turns, especially at the end. Also, this film appealed to me because I don’t particularly like children, and there are several points in the film where children are up to mischief, such as the child demon or when Dalton falls off the ladder because he shouldn’t have been in the attic in the first place. This film is a must see for anyone who likes horrors.