In her seminal 1992 text, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, feminist film theorist Carol J. Clover characterizes the horror genre as being perpetually concerned with the clash of two competing ontological systems: that of “White Science” (Western rationalism) and “Black Magic” (spiritualism) — terms borrowed from ethnobotanist Wade Davis’ controversial “real life zombie” book, The Serpent and the Rainbow. In Clover’s formulation, virtually all modern horror films share a similar moral: that White Science cannot explain all of life’s mysteries.
But one possible kink in Clover’s design may be the Parapsychological Horror subgenre, perhaps best exemplified by Ghostbusters and Poltergeist, but also by James Wan and Leigh Whannel’s Insidious, which borrows most of Poltergeist’s plot with a little Shining thrown in for good measure. In such films, it is spirituality that has failed to account for the existence of psychic disturbances, so it is left up to science, or rather, pseudoscience, to explain and resolve them. Unlike Tobe Hooper’s beloved classic, Insidious adopts an even more stringent psychobabble approach; even its “enchanted little old lady,” Elise (Lin Shaye), is a gifted parapsychologist who wears a gas mask hooked up to a whirring, buzzing machine to communicate with dispossessed souls, while paranormal investigators use highly modified PlaySchool stereoscopes as indicators of “unusual UV activity” — highly scientific stuff.
Our story begins with young Dalton (Ty Simpkins) having fallen into a mysterious coma, which his mother, Renai (Rose Byrne), believes to be linked to a run-of-the-mill case of “haunted house.” Not in the least bit daunted by what some might consider an unusual imputation, her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) agrees to relocate the family. But when the move fails to rouse the boy from his sleep and the hauntings pick up in the new locale, the couple enlists the services of Elise, who explains that their son is, in fact, an experienced “astral traveler” possessed of a skill inherited from his father — a sort of… shinning — that allows him to leave his body for extended periods of time. Sometimes, during these spiritual vacations, travelers can become lost in a parallel dimension called “the Further,” wherein tortured, disembodied souls dwell, and while these travelers are lost, their inert physical forms can become possessed by errant spirits — in some cases, demons that look a lot like Darth Maul. To further frustrate meaning-making, this spirit realm turns out to be virtually identical to Josh and Renai’s first home — which Elise has already confirmed is not haunted — and among the tortured souls inhabiting it are any number of gruesome old ladies in wedding and mourning dresses, and a pair of demonically wholesome “fifties suburbanite” twin girls, one of whom murdered her entire family. (Shinning!)
Despite the constraints of a $1 million budget — which was clearly blown on a single, not-even-remotely-scary CGI sequence — Insidious offers a smattering of thrills, some of them cheaper than others, and most of them aided largely by Joseph Bishara’s comically grandiose soundtrack. Byrne is wasted on a bland neurotic-believer-in-the-supernatural character and forced to wear baggy pajamas, while Wilson just barely ekes an adequate performance out of the same old ‘golly gee, I don’t feel too strongly about anything’ shtick. Saw-scribe Whannel clearly hasn’t lost his acute ear for plebeian poetry, as his aggressively expository, 40,000-word script features lines like “the universe picked the wrong chick to mess with.” His obsessive desire to explain everything coupled with a general inability to explain anything is really what damns this well-intentioned sort-of remake. Space operas taught us that psychobabble works only in snatches, so the viewer doesn’t have a chance to analyze it; drawn-out sequences of talking heads espousing pure gibberish are tantamount to showing a movie monster in high key lighting and expecting it to be scary… which the filmmakers also do.
