I’ve been trying to get into more horror for the spooky season and I don’t think there’s any better day than the night before Halloween to watch a scary movie. There’s more fun to be had on Halloween itself than watching a movie, and the day after is just too late.

I’ve never seen the first ‘Insidious’ movie, which did make it a little strange to hop right into the third one without any preamble. Thankfully, it is a prequel, so I was able to follow everything pretty well. As far as horror movies go, it’s not the scariest I’ve ever seen, but it had some great camera work, cleverly frightening scenarios, and a decent plot to boot. Most horror movies don’t scare me at all because I’m too busy critiquing the storyline, but this movie was surprisingly coherent. It has a well defined world with a cool, psychic afterlife thing that explains the spirits haunting the main characters Quinn and Elise. After Quinn failed to reach out to her deceased mother in the afterlife, or the ‘light’ as psychic Elise defines it, another, darker spirit heard her, and has taken a liking to Quinn. It stalks her day and night, following her to an audition that she needs to nail after she calls out to her mother again against Elise’s advice. It follows her home, catches her in the street, and, in the worst jump scare of the whole movie, a speeding car hits her so hard it sends her into a coma. The demon is able to dig even deeper into her soul as she recovers from grievous injury.

Quinn’s relationship with her father has strained since her mother died, but it grows back steadily as he’s forced to take care of her after the demon’s antics leave Quinn bedridden. The spiritual visits from the parasitic demon only get worse as time goes on though, increasing in frequency and potency as it further drains her life force. The psychic Elise decides to go against her long standing declaration to never engage in psychic work again in order to save Quinn’s life, but to do so she’ll have to risk her own life and face down the malevolent spirit that has been haunting her for years.

No spoilers, but the story rounds out nicely, and even sets up sequels well. Most every thread is tied up well, which is not something I can say for most horror movies that leave me wanting. The worst aspect of this movie (in my opinion) is probably that it watches more like an action movie at times than a horror movie. Elise’s psychic powers put more in the position of a superhero than a regular human being. There were long stretches where it felt like I was watching a long episode of ‘Supernatural.’ I sweat I expected Sam and Dean to come busting down a door and blast the spirits with rock salt at any second. It’s not a terrible feeling to have while watching a horror movie. I’m not even really sure why I have a problem with it. I guess I’m just something of a stickler maybe. It was certainly more of a true horror movie in the first half than the second though.

All in all, it was a fun movie, which is the most important part of a horror movie for me. I like being scared for the characters on screen, and the clever approaches to putting the characters in peril kept me constantly on my toes. I’d even be happy to watch the other ‘Insidious’ movies, so maybe I’ll do a marathon some time if I can find all of them in one place.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley