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Insidious Reviews

Wan knows how to use his familiar bag of tricks to make us squirm and jump at the right moments, and today that’s rare among this brand of haunted house fright movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 31, 2023

While it’s long been time to call a moratorium on both haunted-house thrillers and creepy-child sagas, Insidious milks a bit of innovativeness from both these sub-genres before self-destructing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 27, 2023

There have been far scarier movies that have been made and, while some are better than Insidious, there are many more that are MUCH worse.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 14, 2023

With Insidious, Wan and Whannell prove that they are not just one-trick ponies and deliver one of the scariest and best horror films of the new century.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2020

What it does it does with enough thrills, chills, and laughs to make it easily worth a view for connoisseurs of all things horror.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 12, 2020

If Insidious were willing to really embrace the connection between insidious possession and the insidious allure of gender deviance, it would be a much better film.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2019

A cinematic version of one of those corny Halloween houses.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2018

Despite following a fairly formulaic narrative, Insidious pulls off more than the usual compliment of spine-tingling scares and memorably grotesque imagery

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2018

Insidious has no higher ambition than to scare the audience, and it succeeds much of the time.

A scary movie that doesn't rely heavily on CGI and gore like many horror movies of today, but rather more on plot and interesting characters.

The film's main source of horror - the spirits - seemed like they were borrowed from previous horror films. They're intended to be scary but having seen similar ones so many times before.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 28, 2017

"Insidious" ultimately works because of Mr. Whannell's script, which manages to be inventive and unpredictable despite its paint-by-numbers formalism.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2015

A tale of intriguing situations that rise to the surface carefully and cautiously before they explode in a flashy series of stimulating resolutions.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 4, 2015

Finds a pitch-perfect balance between homage and originality.

Full Review | Aug 26, 2015

This is a movie that wants to be several movies at once. It turns out to be none of them.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jun 22, 2013

Insidious is effectively creepy and is able to provide some great horror elements without the gore.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 2, 2013

After a suspenseful and shock-filled first hour, it loses control and veers off into routine supernatural silliness. I hate it when that happens.

Full Review | Feb 15, 2013

The best horror movies get the audience talking back to the screen. "Insidious" manages that, and how...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 9, 2013

About as subtle as a fart at a séance

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 27, 2012

"Insidious" has a lot going for it, but sadly it's brought down too much by its silly & poorly executed final act, which quashes the film's momentum and has it stumbling too much as it tries to reach the finish line.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 20, 2012

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Movie Review

Something’s Going On in That House

• Share full article

By Mike Hale

• March 31, 2011

In “Insidious,” their latest attempt to go straight, the “Saw” team of James Wan (director) and Leigh Whannell (writer) avoid almost completely the gore and mechanized instruments of torture on which they built their careers. The results are mixed.

For about half its length “Insidious,” a haunted-house picture starring Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson as embattled parents facing shadowy presences in their new home, is a suggestive bump-in-the-night thriller with a few honest scares. It relies too heavily on sound effects and Joseph Bishara’s almost comically foreboding music to make up for pedestrian camerawork, but it still shows Mr. Wan aspiring to the kind of B-movie auteurship represented by Joseph Ruben (“The Stepfather”) or Jack Clayton (“The Innocents”).

Then, with the arrival of a pair of geeky ghostbusters (Mr. Whannell and Angus Sampson), whose tools include antique cameras and vintage View-Masters, it becomes an entirely different and less interesting film. What had been an eerie ghost story becomes a literal-minded, overexplained, jokily self-referential demonic procedural — in other words, a run-of-the-mill 21st-century horror movie.

The suddenly frenetic action is matched by a riot of visual references to Japanese horror, Wes Craven and David Lynch, but the strongest analogue for the second half of “Insidious” is one that the filmmakers probably weren’t trying for: it feels like a less poetic version of an M. Night Shyamalan fairy tale. 

“Insidious” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Scary stuff and bloodless violence.

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by James Wan; written by Leigh Whannell; directors of photography, John R. Leonetti and David M. Brewer; edited by Mr. Wan and Kirk Morri; music by Joseph Bishara; production design by Aaron Sims; costumes by Kristin M. Burke; produced by Jason Blum, Steven Schneider and Oren Peli; released by Film District. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes.

WITH: Patrick Wilson (Josh Lambert), Rose Byrne (Renai Lambert), Lin Shaye (Elise Rainier), Ty Simpkins (Dalton Lambert), Leigh Whannell (Specs), Angus Sampson (Tucker) and Barbara Hershey (Lorraine Lambert).

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