Hallowatch 2026 No. 16: Insidious (2010)
Against my better judgment, I enjoyed this movie.
Wikipedia; Not really discussing the synopsis with this.
It's interesting that James Wan challenged himself to make a non-gory horror film and ended up with so much Lore. Like is that what stands in for blood-n-guts? a pile of facts you have to keep straight and someone old to speak them to you? That seems to be the way the Halloween 4-5-6 movies did it too. Unlike the first batch of Halloween sequels, this actually does a great job with managing lore, building and maintaining tension, even the cheaper jump scares are all really well executed throughout this.
Performance-wise, I think this was solid; Patrick Wilson is doing his leading-man-character-actor bit (which, what a fascinating niche; does that happen for anyone else ever? "yeah I mostly play a clark kent-alike"), Rose Byrne is fantastic as always, I think the only weirdness in the supporting cast was Angus Sampson being so clean groomed and put together — I'm used to seeing him a bit more slovenly, like in The Stand or Fargo.
A bit that made me laugh was how well Wilson channeled his inner dad with the "what the hell were you doing climbing on the ladder" part; I don't know if I've seen that side of him before, he's usually just generically warm.
One does have to wonder about how many pianos Wan and team burned through when every jumpscare is accompanied by the sound of a smashing piano. That's probably where all the "free piano" posts that used to litter craigslist's musical instruments section went.
Rewatch? Maybe next year. Sequels? Maybe next year's hallowatch - I'm kicking around the idea of doing "oops all sequels", although that may have some fatigue baked in. Remake? Yeah absolutely. Just not Mike Flanagan. ■
