Movie Review - Insidious

The hairs on my arms stood up for the ending of this horrific tale of possession from the creative teams behind the Saw franchise and the Paranormal Activity (soon to be) trilogy. James Wan directed and Oren Peli is sited as producer on Insidious which is a story of a young boy who strangely falls into a coma and his family struggle to find out the cause of this bizarre occurrence. I enjoyed this movie understanding who was making it and who they were making it for.

It follows a similar story to the Paranormal movies but in a more narrative structure, adding in a much more elaborate set of possessor beings. The family is struggling to keep from tearing apart as the mother starts to see things that the husband/father seems to know nothing about. There's much more to that then the father, wonderfully played by Patrick Wilson, is leading on. He's a very strong character in this, although has much less to do with discovering the incidents. Rose Byrne, who plays the resilient mother, takes all things in stride to a point before calling in professional help. The secondary characters were believable too! I think the cast was well rounded for the movie.

The soundtrack was amazing too! It really kept me on the edge of my seat. It was a more traditional horror film with a very suspenseful strings section and often used spaces of no sound quite well.

Don't leave before the credits are over and you'll get a small tidbit. It's not much, but it's enough to re-raise the arm hairs a bit. Overall, I give this movie a three and a half arm hairs up out of five. For more, check out Imdb or ImdbPro.com

WIND CHILL

Emily Blunt (Prudie Drummond in "The Jane Austin Book Club"....arrrrrggghhrr echth! Sorry, Jack just never thought he'd be mentioning Jane Austin on this blog, ever), and Ashton Holmes (Jack Stahl in "History of Violence"), play the Girl and Guy in the Sony Picture's release of "WIND CHILL". And yes that is how they are billed, Girl and Guy.

I never saw this movie hit the theaters but actually caught it on Starz recently. I had my doubts, but sat up one night with a plate of snacks and soda, turned down the lights and watched this very good ghost story.

Yes, I said it, Wind Chill is a a ghost story. No chainsaws, no 3 lb. mallets, no devices which snap on your head if you can't dig a key out of your ass before the timer goes off. Just a plain old ghost story.


Girl and Guy get together for a shared ride home from college for the holidays. In 30 degree below temperatures Guy makes the incredibly bad choice of taking a shortcut route (WRONG TURN) onto a very bad stretch of road. Guy crashes the car and he and girl must survive a night teaming with hidden terrors.

The best thing about this movie is that tension is built in a simple environment with a decent script coupled with wind and snow machines machines being the only special effects. There is a certain amount of predictability for those who love the horror genre, but a few good chills and surprises are there to keep up the interest I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat more than once.

Anyway if you get a chance to catch it on Stars or Fearnet wherever, then give it a shot!!

New horrific, chainsaw zombie animation, claymation video from takena on Youtube