Insidious, starring Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne

James Wan is a director who will probably always be known for one thing. Same goes for his frequent collaborator, writer Leigh Whannell. Both are primarily responsible for the genre defining horror franchise, Saw, and the basic existence of "torture porn" as we know it. They hate that term, by the way. Both have been trying to step further away from Jigsaw for years. In 2007 Wan directed the Kevin Bacon revenge thriller, Death Sentence, and the two paired up for the severely mishandled horror, Dead Silence. Insidious, a spooky, fully realized twist on the old poltergeist staple, is perhaps the most clear reason yet to stop referring to them as just "The Saw Guys".

At first glance, Insidious has all the trappings of a "been there done that" Paranormal Activity knock-off. Josh(Patrick Wilson) and Renai(Rose Byrne) pick up and move their seemingly happy family into a new home. All appears to be normal, even if the house has that "somebody was killed here years ago" feel to it. Nothing appears to be out of order. Josh is a teacher, while Renai is a struggling songwriter. She spends most of the time taking care of the kids when she'd really like to be working. It's the only sign of trouble in their relationship. The house is one of those that has a number of small spaces and places for kids to run and hide. Their son, Dalton, exploring one of these curious areas accidentally falls and bangs his head. He's fine, until he doesn't wake up the next morning. He's slipped into a coma, but doctors can't find the cause. It wasn't the fall that did it. Something else is clearly going on.

For months Dalton won't wake up. During this time, Renai is plagued by what I think is the same passive-aggressive demon terrorizing every other movie of this type. Dishes in the kitchen get clanged around, cabinets fly open, and things start going "Boom!!" for no apparent reason. She starts seeing images of unknown creatures around the house, but whenever she tries to point them out, they disappear. Josh wants to believe her, but is skeptical and distant. His mysteriously informative mother, Lorraine(Barbara Hershey), brings in Elise(Lin Shaye) a curious family friend to sniff out anything supernatural. She comes with a pair of  bumbling ghost hunters(Angus Sampson and Whannell himself), with a set of gadgets that would've looked outdated in Ghostbusters 2.

I don't want to give away the big second act reveal, but let's just say that there's more than a simple poltergeist at play here.  In a lot of ways, Insidious is a very traditional horror. What tends to be missing from a lot of movies just like this is any real reason to care about the people being terrorized. I look at a film like Paranormal Activity, which I liked quite a bit. It's creator, Oren Peli, is a producer on this film. One of my biggest issues with Paranormal Activity was that I didn't really give a crap what happened to either of the two stars. There's a real focus on establishing Patrick and Renai to us, so that we don't end up rooting for the demons to win. Movies like this are about pace and atmosphere, and Wan gets them both perfectly. While the film is deadly serious most of the time, there's more than enough humor and camp to not get bogged down. Once we find out the true nature of the situation, the story goes a little bit off the rails. It's far more effective as the tension is mounting.

It helps that Wan and Whannel had a gifted cast who understood the nature of the film they were making. Wilson and Byrne are believable as the worried parents, but it's the supporting players who really rose to the occasion.  Lin Shaye's arrival is like the flipping of a switch, cranking up the stakes and adding a humorous element to the story at the same time. She's chewing some serious scenery here, folks, and clearly loving every bit of it. I think they missed out on an opportunity to link Insidious to Barbara Hershey's awesome performance in 1983's The Entity. Just seeing her here in a movie so similar makes for a few chuckles. Just be like me and pretend she's the same character. I promise it'll make Insidious even more fun.

You'd be surprised to learn that Insidious is rated PG-13, usually a deathblow for any decent horror film. In particular for the, and I hate to say it, the guys who made Saw you'd think the rating would kneecap the movie's scares. Horror is all about pressing the right emotional buttons, focusing on our fear receptors. Wan proves he's as capable of giving us goosebumps as he is making us want to vomit. That's a much tougher skill to learn than people think.