Um...why is the "si" in "Insidious" highlighted in this poster? Anyone...? I'd really like to know, so leave a comment if you have an idea. Insidious comes to us from the director of Saw and Death Sentence, the writer of the first Saw trilogy, and is produced by the guy who created Paranormal Activity. While I hate the Saw series (seriously, don't get me started...), even I have to admit that this is a pretty high-profile pedigree for a new intellectual property. In this world of sequels and rehashed movie ideas, though, that isn't always the best move.
Insidious starts with the Lambert family in a new home. Apparently this is a family where mothers wear the same pajamas as their children, but that's not where this movie even begins to get creepy.
Am I the only one who was bothered by this?
Little Dalton (Ty Simpkins) claims to not like his new bedroom and, on a possibly unrelated note, wanders into the attic where he takes a spill and knocks his noggin. The next morning, when his father, Josh (Patrick Wilson), goes to wake Dalton up, he gets no response. Dalton is comatose. Josh and his wife, Renai (Rose Byrne), take him to the hospital, but nobody knows why he won't wake up. Three months later, Dalton is moved from the hospital to his home, still comatose and still an enigma.
If he was in college, his friends would probably have written "penis" on his forehead
That's when things start to get weird. At night, the house's security alarm starts blaring because the front door has apparently opened of its own volition; even with Josh closing and locking the door and resetting the alarm, the door opens again almost immediately. Renai starts seeing ghosts in Dalton's room, but pretty soon she is seeing and hearing things throughout the entire house; the creepiest is probably the one that sounds like a child at play, but the funniest is one who dances to Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Obviously, their new house is haunted. In an unexpected horror movie move, the realistic father that doesn't believe in ghosts agrees to sell the house and move to a new home. It doesn't work --- the ghosts follow them to their new home. So what do you do if your wife insists that your family is being haunted? You call in the experts. Or, at the very least, some friends of your mom.
Divorce is also an option
The acting in Insidious is better than a movie from the makers of Saw deserves. While I have never been a Patrick Wilson fan, he is completely adequate in this role. He has the fairly thankless task of being the rational person in an irrational world, and he's not half bad. Rose Byrne gets to freak out a bit more, and she still managed to not be annoying. That makes two main characters in a horror movie that I didn't actively want to see die. Not too shabby. The kids were fine, neither too annoying nor too whiny.
Lin Shaye had the difficult exorcist role, and she was pretty good, although not the scene-stealer that I think the part could have been. Barbara Hershey was decent in a small supporting role, even if she primarily just provided exposition.
I was surprised to find that director James Wan was capable of using smaller scares effectively. While that didn't translate into a film that was completely even, it was a pleasant surprise. Wan is not the most delicate of directors, but he managed a solid cast and made a movie that was pretty close to being good. Where Insidious really stands out is in the type of scares it provides. You might think that this team of filmmakers would make a gory ghost story, or at least one filled with "gotcha" scares, but they actually do a pretty good job building and utilizing suspense. For most of the film, the ghosts are rarely seen, but effectively used.
They're being haunted by a Sith Apprentice!
Half-glimpses can be very effective when used well, and Insidious does a pretty good job. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but the first two-thirds of the movie genuinely impressed me.
The final act is a pretty huge problem, though. After spending a lot of deliberate time and effort building an effective horror story built on suspense and mystery, the filmmakers take a left turn and spend the final act as a supernatural action movie. Remember all those ghosts that were really creepy when you only saw them for a split-second?
Is this the Black Hole Sun music video?
They're not very scary when they actually get some screen time. Especially when you can fight them off by yelling "Leave me alone." And especially when Darth Maul is listening to "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." It's not just the loss of impact that the ghosts have that brings the final third of the movie down, though. The very premise of the movie seems to change. I understand the concept of plot twists, but they should be...well, interesting. The shift in tone away from subtle horror and toward silly science fiction really hurt Insidious. I was prepared to see this as the prequel the world has always demanded to Road House, explaining exactly how Dalton got so awesome.
Answer: childhood coma caused by ghosts and demons
But no. Sadly, the tension that was built so effectively gets wasted by adding a left-field plot element and having Josh's shouts of "Leave me alone" be effective weapons against the ghosts was very disappointing. As for the twist after the twist...well, I think the less said about that, the better.
"Leave me alone"? Why didn't the kid think of that?
The twists in Insidious feel like the filmmakers were suddenly unsure of the direction they had taken the story in up to that point. I would have loved to see the story follow that original tack and have a satisfying ending, but it was not to be. For every dumb idea that should not have worked (the exorcist's gas mask) but was effective, there was a stupid plot point* that undermined the film's credibility. Insidious isn't bad by any means --- my wife certainly won't be watching it anytime soon --- but I was ultimately disappointed.
* Okay, so Patrick Wilson's character doesn't believe in the crap being peddled by the exorcist, right? Of course not. Then he goes into his son's room and notices Dalton's drawings plastered all over the wall. Many of them support exorcist lady's claims! Here's why that is stupid: this is a new house. Dalton hasn't been putting up his own pictures on the wall. "Maybe someone else put them up for him." Fair enough, D. Advocate. But these pictures are arranged in a haphazard fashion, all over the wall, spilling out from the bulletin board that was clearly designed to be the place for artwork. I refuse to believe that any parent that has the option of arranging their child's room would choose to make it look sloppy. And it's a little suspicious that every drawing Dalton drew apparently had a deeper meaning to it.
I don't get ballerinas. I see the appeal of ballet (dancing, music, women with the bodies of twelve year-old boys), but I cannot fathom the mind of a ballerina. There is so much pressure, both mental and physical, and the payoff is disgusting feet.
Ballet causes leper feet. Fact.
Does that mean that Black Swan will have just as little payoff? That's a tough call. The film stars Natalie Portman (which is good), is directed by Darren Aronovsky (which is typically depressing), and has some very strong sexual scenes (which is good) that are frequently referred to as weird and uncomfortable (which is less good). Going into this, I was interested in the film's possibilities, but wary of the many signs that I would not enjoy it.
Nina (Natalie Portman) is one of the many supporting ballet dancers at New York's Prestigious Ballet Company, where the star ballerina, the apple of director Thomas' (Vincent Cassel) eye, is the aging legend, Beth (Winona Ryder). For his next production, Thomas wants to do a new take on Swan Lake, one that is raw and passionate; just as importantly, Thomas doesn't want Beth to be his star. The timid Nina sees her chance to seize greatness, and tries her hardest to impress Thomas. Her form is technically perfect, but lacks passion. That's a problem, because the lead in Swan Lake plays both the fragile and pure White Swan and the sexy and dangerous Black Swan. Thomas eventually ends up casting her for the role anyway, thanks to a faint spark he sees deep within her. Still, he demands that she find a way to unleash that trapped-up passion for the performance, and he points to the newest girl in the company, the raw and unpolished Lily (Mila Kunis), as an example of what it takes to be the Black Swan.
That doesn't sound too weird, does it? Well, Nina lives with her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), who was also a ballerina; Erica places a lot of pressure on her daughter to fulfill her own ballet dreams. For added creepiness, there is no lock on Nina's bedroom door. Clearly, Nina's social life is not terribly exciting, but that's not too weird. Well then, how about the unexplained rash on Nina's back that keeps getting worse as the movie progresses? Or the flashes of goose-pimples (or should I say swan-pimples?) that pop up on her skin at key moments? Well, if that's not weird enough for you, how about Nina's obviously loose grip on reality? She sees her own face on the bodies of strangers all the time and sometimes has imaginary encounters with others. What, exactly, is going through her tiny dancer's mind?
Darren Aronofsky has a tendency to make movies about things I don't really care much about. That doesn't make him a bad director, it just means that he doesn't regularly deal in what I regard as cinematic awesomeness. Whatever his subject taste might be, you have to admit that the man can shoot a movie. The cinematography was very effective in Black Swan. I thought the special effects (and there were a lot of them, surprisingly) were handled very well and the editing allowed for the greatest impact whenever Aronofsky wanted to get weird or creepy. I didn't particularly enjoy the shaky hand-held camera scenes, but that technique was clearly being used to disorient the viewer and leave them uncertain of what they had seen. All in all, the camerawork and editing were very effective. I thought Aronofsky handled the actors well, too, although I believe this was more of a director piece than a showcase for great acting. Aronofsky did a good job telling the story, too, even if I didn't particularly care for it. Actually, that's putting it a bit mildly. I think all the artsy storytelling and camerawork done by Aronofsky was wasted on a substandard story.
I don't know much of anything about ballet, aside from whatever I learned in the cinematic ballet masterpiece, Center Stage. I don't know any ballets in general, or anything about Swan Lake, in particular. And yet, even I was able to pick up on the intended parallels between the plot of Swan Lake and Black Swan. I understand the artistic drive to add layers to a story, but this just seemed a little weak to me. Do we really need the story of Black Swan to be so tied to that of the ballet? Doesn't that neuter any suspense the film is trying to build? Yes, it does. It also makes the film more predictable and boring. This story device just brings the rest of the movie down.
I was also left cold by the story itself. I thought it was generally predictable, even with the strange/creepy moments supplied by Aronofsky. Big surprise, ballerinas have issues with their image. What's that, performers are extremely jealous of each other and protective of their positions? I'll notify the Associated Press. A young performer has been pushed into that profession by a parent's desire to succeed vicariously through their child? Gosh. Ballerinas are crazy? I would never have thought that bulimics that do things with their body that nature never intended (look at their feet!) might not be completely sane. A lot of this story was simply trite. Yes, the direction is impressive, but the story is shallow and so are the relationships in the movie.
Now this looks like an interesting ballerina movie! No cliches here!
A lot of the attention Black Swan received was for the acting of Natalie Portman, and I will admit that she did a good job. She looked like a skeleton ballerina, and she did a very impressive job portraying somebody that is slowly going crazy. She also did a great job playing an uptight character whose emotions were easily understood by the audience --- that's difficult when a character is reserved. However, her character has a wild side waiting to be unleashed, and that wild side is played by another actor (for the most part). That means that we never really see a wide range of emotions in Portman's performance, which is a shame. Mila Kunis was surprisingly good as the carefree dancer; I normally despise her voice and her acting, but I thought she was pretty good here. Barbara Hershey did a good job as the obsessive mother, although I think her character was one or two good scenes away from something startlingly vicious. Oh, well. Winona Ryder's small part was okay, I guess, but nothing too special. As for Vincent Cassel...yeah, I guess he was fine. I have had a hard time not hating him in movies ever since his yoga break dancing scene from Ocean's Twelve.
Overall, I think that the boring predictability of the story more or less negates the solid acting. Portman was good, but her character was, as demanded by the plot, necessarily undeveloped. I liked Aronofsky's direction, and the camera work was impressive. But without either A) a cool story or B) any real relationships on-screen, this drama doesn't quite work. I'll give it due credit for its impressive technical achievements, but I just didn't like or enjoy this picture.
Now, as a red-blooded American male, I cannot review Black Swan without commenting on the sexy Natalie Portman masturbation and lesbian scenes. I will admit they were cool, but I think hat this really stupid and immature video (read: borderline NSFW) sums up my feelings.
