Insidious: Personal Film Review

Media Studies- horror review

Insidious two was directed by James Wan and is an American supernatural horror film that is a sequel from the first insidious that was released in 2011. This film received over $137 million worldwide, nearly twenty eight times its production budget due to the dark story that made many horror fans hungry to watch it. The film is psychologically scary, and does not depend on gore and blood to make it dominant and strong in the competitive horror market. The story is about a dangerous connection being made between family members and dark figures that live in the spirit world, leading to death, panic, and an unsettled family scared of trusting one another in case of unwanted demons possessing and taking over their bodies. The film is very dependent on its use of music, it uses strong contrapuntal music (harsh thuds and squeaks) that builds tension in many scenes and gets us on edge for what is about to happen. We can hear this music repeatedly before we see the ghostly figure. The technique of using this particular type of music fits perfectly with this supernatural horror as it makes us as an audience feel more involved and adds to the scared emotion that already lingers around this twisted movie.

A key scene within the horror film is the returning of a mental hospital; this uses many parts of our genre checklist, including creepy location, low key lighting, canted angles, and hand held camera shots. With the use of these techniques we feel very vulnerable to the danger that is about to occur, and very uncertain of what is going to actually happen, the darkness and mixtures of different angle shots makes the scene very disorientated, confusing and for most extremely unnerving. The use of the hand held camera allows us to be part of the action, and helps us mimic the same emotions to those of the characters. In many supernatural horror films the hand held camera is used, to create a sense of realism and normality even in the most unsettling situations.  Another scene that stands out in this particular film is the death of the spiritual connecter Elise, the music goes from contrapuntal to complete silence as we get a close up of her facial expression as she has just been killed, the use of the makeup on her face (dark and shadowy) makes it a memorable frozen picture, and makes us aware that death is a key theme within this film. This is the first time we see that connecting with these spirits gets people badly hurt, and starts the drama off to be intriguing and lets the audience become more curious as to why these things are happen to the nicest of people.  The low key lighting in the background of this scene makes us scared of what is going to come out of the darkness, and it also connotes the evil that haunts the family.

This particular film has the majority of the genre checklist for horror within it, and as we can see the statistics of the amount of viewers was incredibly high and therefor the films criteria was obviously extremely successful for horror fans. This proves that to make a successful horror movie you have to be confident with the key parts needed within a horror film. The film covered a broad area of the checklist and only missed out things that were not relevant to this particular type of horror.  We can convey that the director James Wan had been influenced by many of these key genre techniques and therefor made them all work for this particular horror movie, further emphasizing the quality and success of the film.

When analysing this particular film I found it incredibly interesting to pick parts out that worked very well and that could possibly work when making my own trailer. I thought that the quick changes between camera angles worked fantastically as it allowed us as an audience to take on the stress of the characters and to feel generally unnerved about the whole setting. I loved the use of the hand held camera as it sometimes went from restricted narration to seeing the whole setting, the jump between these two opposites also made us as an audience frightened due to the fact we could see exactly what the character holding the camera could see, therefore making us part of the drama and involving us with the thrilling fright that makes us all intrigued about horror. I think that this would work well within the particular trailer I am planning due to the fact out of everything this part of the film made me feel in the world of the characters and took me out of my comfort zone.

In this particular film there was a lot of contrapuntal music, especially when connecting with the demons in the house, I think that this worked incredibly well, however I sometimes think that too much music can take away effect from the drama. I am going to try and avoid using the same music repeatedly and go from parallel to silence as I think that this is different, unique and memorable. I also think that this film needed more close ups of facial expressions so that we can get a more in-depth analysis of the persons inside thoughts, and this is something I aim to do when making my trailer. I am not a fan of horror movies and therefore my most preferred part of the movie is when they reach a new equilibrium, as we see reconciliation between the family and us as characters feel the same emotional thoughts as they do.  This also allows us to understand more about the film in general as it pulls together a conclusion of what the whole film was about and why particular aspects in the film occurred. 

When researching about the director James Wan I was interested by the amount of horror films he had directed, ranging from saw, death sentence, and dead silence. Within all of these movies it tries to push the boundaries of innocent people, and mental torture takes place due to hatred of their lives.  In insidious we see this in the main female character Rose Byrne who plays Renai Lambert in the film. She starts to doubt herself and the thoughts of negativity start to become too overwhelming, so much so that she starts to show her frustration and pain through lack of sleep, constant looking around and general shaking when scared. We see the influence of its auteur director through these small but impacting points within the film. James Wan also likes to show the person/object/ghost or anything that brings the thrill to the movie, and happily displays this on screen without using restricted narration. This occurs many times in the movie, when seeing the lady in the white dress sitting on the sofa, walking around the house, or appearing in the mirror. These three repeated actions show us as an audience the influence that James Wan has on the film and how they are portrayed on screen. 

This film was released in 2011 and therefore is relatively new. Historical context allows us as an audience to relate particular things from the movie to the particular year that the movie was made. We can see from this movie that death and unwanted figures reflected our historical context. Nowadays many people are scared of intruders and being harmed by members of the society, and therefore this is reflected by the ghostly figure that harms the father (Josh Lambert) who can’t do anything to stop it from happening. This particular horror film ends with a happy equilibrium for the family we feel as though we understand, however the clip then cross cuts to a new family having similar problems, leaving the overall film open, and us on a very unsettling cliff-hanger.