Day 5: 31 Days of Horror: Insidious (2010)

I love stories dealing with haunted houses and possession. They always freak me out. Now, Insidious (2010) is not the scariest movie I have ever seen, by any means, but it was a good attempt. It reminds me of an extremely condensed and tamed version of The Poltergeist (1982), The Changeling (1980), and The Shining (1980) all mixed together. The story is interesting, which is why it's worth checking out.

Insidious follows a young family who has just moved into a new house. One day, an incident occurs in the attic that terrifies their son, Dalton. Afterwards, Dalton ends up falling into an unexplained coma. No one seems to be able to help him and the family starts to experience more paranormal activity within the house, with visions of a man with a red face. The family becomes so frightened that they end up moving again, only problem is, the haunting follows them to the new place as well! 

Unsure of where to turn to next, the family ends up bringing in paranormal investigators for help. From this, they learn that their son is not really in a coma, but is a well-accomplished astral projectionist. In other words, he is successful in having out-of-body experiences when he is asleep. Usually, he is able to make it back to his body, but he ends up going too far into a dimension known as 'The Further' during his last projection that he and is unable to make it back to his physical body. Now, evil spirits have been lurking around his body in hopes of being able to possess it.

There is only one way to save Dalton and it is dangerous, someone else must successfully astral project themselves into 'The Further' and help him get back. It just so happens that the father is an accomplished astral projectionist and he too ended up in a dangerous situation back when he was a child because of this. However, he went through a lot of therapy, so he forgot it ever happened to him, therefore, he doubts he can go in and save his son. Will he be successful in bringing Dalton back to the living world? Watch to find out.

I do not think that this movie is too scary to watch, if you don't like to be too freaked out by what you are watching. I might have thought differently if I hadn't seen The Poltergeist, The Changeling, and The Shining before seeing this film, or if I had watched it at a younger age. However, those movies made me have high expectations for horrific moments. I will say, that old woman ghost in this movie did creep me out, more so than the red faced guy. I do not like that old woman ghost. She needs to go away. I also liked the concept that moving houses did not make the haunting leave the family. The seance scene was also well done.