“INSIDIOUS” | Horror
** 1/2 STAR RATING (out of 4)
PG-13. 1 hour, 42 minutes; Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne. At area theaters.
One of the demons in “Insidious” is wearing what looks like a Darth Maul Halloween mask. And the finale is a tad too literal and a lot too long and drawn out.
But that doesn’t spoil what is, without a doubt, the spookiest and most entertaining horror flick since “Paranormal Activity.”
“Insidious” is a haunted-house tale in the “Poltergeist” mold — a child in jeopardy, a mother (played by Rose Byrne) struggling to get her head around it and a father (Patrick Wilson) in denial.
Renai and Josh and their three kids have just moved into a nice, older, wooden two-story home. She’s hearing things in this quiet, creaky house. So does their oldest son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins). He investigates, and next thing you know, he’s in a coma that medical science can’t explain.
As Renai stares mournfully at her little boy as the nurse explains how to lubricate the breathing tube she’ll have to remove, clean and insert every day, the quietly chilling home settles into mourning.
James Wan, graduating from the “torture-porn” genre he helped launch with “Saw” and working with both his “Saw” screenwriter/collaborator Leigh Whannell and producer Oren Peli (“Paranormal Activity”), builds tension with glimpses of cadaverous faces, people in odd costumes and the like.
It falls to Byrne to sell the reality of all this, and she does — a woman paralyzed by fear but made brave because she has to be. She’s a mother, after all.
One can cast a jaundiced eye at Wan and Whannell’s role in the popularization of movies such as “Saw.” But their departure from the genre is fun and full of jolts.
