Insidious

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.  

X-Men: First Class

I will be completely honest with you --- I absolutely hated X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  I'm a huge X-Men comics fan, so it took a lot to completely ruin my excitement in the film franchise; imagining Godzilla using Tokyo as a Slip-n-Slide doesn't quite capture how much those two movies destroyed my faith in X-Men movies, but it's pretty close.  When it was announced that, despite the awfulness of X-MO:W, they were still going ahead with an X-Men Origins: Magneto --- complete with Benjamin Button special effects to de-age Ian McKellan --- my hopes were not high.  But those plans changed, and the Magneto story was incorporated into the story for what would become X-Men: First Class.

Oh, what could have been...!

More importantly, Bryan Singer (director of the first two X-Men films) entered the picture as a producer and Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) was announced as the director.  That might sound only promising to the layperson, but I remember being super excited when Vaughn was originally hired to direct X-Men 3 and frustrated when he quit and the movie ended up sucking horribly.  On the bright side, Vaughn was ballsy enough to later claim that his version of X3 would have been "one hundred times better" than what was eventually made.  Actually, that sounds mathematically possible.  How did it turn out?

Life magazine covers were the best.  We need more homages to them.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with X-Men, here's a quick recap.  Evolution has produced mutations in the human genome, and these mutations have resulted in people with super-powers.  Are they the next evolutionary step?  Will normal humans fear and hate these mutants?  Yes to both.  In the X-Men trilogy, Professor Charles Xavier led his team of X-Men in a fight for peace and equality among humans and mutants.  Xavier's old friend Magneto fought for mutant superiority.  And somehow, the third film was a giant turd milkshake.  There.  You're up to date.

As young boys, Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr had vastly different experiences.  While Charles was living in a mansion --- and basically adopting his very own shapeshifting mutant girl, Raven --- Erik was in a Nazi concentration camp.  When it became apparent that Erik could move metal objects without touching them, a Nazi doctor named Schmidt took interest and experimented on the young man, torturing him and even murdering his mother to see the effect on Erik's ability.

Flash forward a few years and it's suddenly the swinging sixties.  Charles (James McAvoy) is a college student, finishing up his thesis (on genetic mutation, naturally) at Oxford and he lives with his "sister" Raven (Jennifer Lawrence).  Charles --- who can read minds --- spends his time hitting on coeds and talking about mutation, while Raven wishes that she her normal form didn't have blue skin.  Erik (Michael Fassbender), who can magnetically manipulate metals, spends his time hunting and killing the Nazis that escaped Nuremberg, always keeping an eye out for an evidence trail that will lead him to the elusive Doctor Schmidt.

Raven auditioning for a Superstar remake

Meanwhile, the CIA stumbled upon a group of mutants while they were trying to find dirty Communists.  Agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) managed to catch a glimpse of Doctor Schmidt --- now using the name Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) --- and a small group of super-powered henchmen forcing a US General to order nuclear missiles to be placed in Turkey.  This prompts MacTaggert to consult the world expert in genetic mutation, Charles Xavier.  Charles (and Raven) travel to the CIA, learn about Shaw's apparent desire to make the Cold War a hot one, and they join forces.  At the same time, Erik has been murdering his way through Nazis and finally found a trail that leads to Schmidt/Shaw.  Erik confronts him, but is overpowered by Shaw and his underlings.  In a happy coincidence, Charles and the CIA arrive, just in time to be (you guessed it) overpowered by Shaw and his underlings.  Seeing their separate failures, Charles and Erik decide to join forces and create their own team of mutant underlings students to fight in this battle and prevent a nuclear holocaust.

...and this picture doesn't even have all the X-Men or bad guys!

There are a lot of characters in this movie, but I think most of them were given the appropriate amount of screen time.  The bulk of the film hinges on the relationship between the fury-fueled Erik and the philosophical Charles, and I think that's fitting; their characters drive the later films, so having them interact in a more friendly manner is pretty interesting.  I thought James McAvoy did a good job as Charles, but his is a very different character than the saintly cueball portrayed by Patrick Stewart. 

Xavier, fighting male pattern baldness with hair plugs.

McAvoy brings out the young academic in Xavier's character; he finds ways to connect with others and teach them, he has the arrogance to overlook the basic emotional needs in others, and he uses his book smarts to hit on random college chicks.  I actually really liked this flawed and somewhat immature character performance --- I think I'm starting to enjoy McAvoy as an actor, which will thrill my wife, because she has a big ol' crush on him.  The breakthrough performance in the film is definitely Michael Fassbender's work as Erik, the man who will become Magneto.  I always enjoyed the condescendingly charming performances by Ian McKellen in the other movies, but Fassbender makes the character his own and makes him pretty bad-ass.  His character is fairly bloodthirsty, but Fassbender does a great job keeping the character rooted in human emotions.  My favorite parts of the film involve Erik just beating the living hell out of dozens of humans in creative ways.  I'm going to go ahead and call it right now: Michael Fassbender is going to be in some pretty big movies in the next few years, because this was a star-making role.

Magneto, preparing to back-hand some stupid humans.

The rest of the cast is fine, but nobody really gets nearly as much to work with as those two.  Jennifer Lawrence was good as Raven/Mystique, even if her character arc did have a somewhat abrupt ending.  The other X-Men --- Zoe Kravitz as Angel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee, Edi Gathegi as Darwin, and Lucas Till as Havok --- were generally just there to show off special effects, but they were all mostly fine.  Hoult gave the best performance out of the group, although that may be because he had a lot more lines that the rest.  Kevin Bacon was decent as the villainous Shaw, but I didn't think there was anything special about him.  He's Kevin Bacon, and that's fine.  January Jones played the under-clothed Emma Frost, and I guess she was okay.  She didn't really show any emotions or say and do anything cool, aside from some special effect shenanigans.  She rarely wore much more than underwear, though, so at least there's that.

Jason Flemyng, a career bit actor, managed to come off as very cool in his portrayal as Azazel.  Sure, it was just because he had dozens of teleportation special effects and he single-handedly killed about thirty inconsequential military characters on-camera, but it was still entertaining.  Alex Gonzalez was okay as the never-actually-named Riptide, but he was little more than a nice suit with blow-dried hair.  Oliver Platt, James Remar, Matt Craven, Ray Wise, Michael Ironside, the uber-Russian Rade Serbedzija and a few other career military-looking actors have small parts in the film, too.  There were cameos by Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn, too, and they were actually pretty awesome moments, but they didn't really add much to the overall story.

This is a comic book movie, though, so there are a lot of silly/campy moments.  While the young Erik's grief-fueled rampage was pretty cool, his extended cry of "Nein!" got a little unintentionally funny toward the end.  When Sebastian Shaw is frozen in time toward the end of the film, the expression on Kevin Bacon's face had the same effect.  But for every moment that was a little lame, there were several that totally made up for them.  For instance, the X-Men got their code names after they had been drinking for a few hours.  That is a surprisingly plausible explanation for coming up with names like Mystique and Havok.  Charles Xavier -- who can read minds and frequently does to impress women --- steadfastly sticks to the same pick-up line, even when he's too drunk to bullshit convincingly.  Funny, sure, but also somewhat realistic.  Yes, the villains in the movie were generally C- or D-list (Azazel, in particular) and they had no personalities, but that's not a bad thing; I'm glad that some characters were left as just cool-looking henchmen, if only because that gave more story to the two main characters.

I enjoyed Matthew Vaughn's approach to directing this movie.  There was a lot of action, but it also felt very organic.  I loved seeing the X-Men treated as students and actually taught things about their powers.  I thought tying the X-Men into the Cuban Missile Crisis was an interesting choice, and I ultimately think it worked out okay.  Vaughn doesn't have great instincts behind the camera, but I he knows how to tell a story and he knows how to balance fun with seriousness.  And isn't that what all comic book movies should be like?

As entertaining as I found the film, I will admit that it it's not flawless.  Matthew Vaughn doesn't have the style or subtlety of Bryan Singer or Christopher Nolan, and that can sometimes lead to some awkward moments, like the psychic battle for missile control between Charles and Erik.  And yes, a "psychic battle for missile control" happens.  Azazel's appearance in the film appears to just be because people loved Nightcrawler in X-Men 2, but they wanted to make him a bad guy who already looked evil and didn't need character development --- and, as luck would have it, in the depths of the Marvel Comics archives, they found a character fitting that description.  I was disappointed that Jennifer Lawrence, who was so good in Winter's Bone, plays a character with very little subtlety to her.  There are several character interactions that probably wouldn't hold up to a lot of scrutiny, too, but the specifics slip my mind right now.

Despite all that, I really enjoyed this movie.  It was fun and managed to carry some emotional weight, in the tradition of all successful comic book movies.  I am happy to see new life breathed into this franchise, and I hope they fast-track a sequel, or at least give Fassbender a few more roles where he can be mean.  With any luck, this will start a new series of films that don't pay too much respect to the original trilogy.  For having action and fun, while maintaining two solid character arcs, I give First Class