Director Report Card: James Wan (2015)

7. Furious 7 (2015)

Over the course of four movies, Justin Lin managed to transform the “Fast and the Furious” series from a humble trilogy of immediately dated car flicks to one of the most popular action/adventure franchises on the planet. The fifth and sixth installment especially moved past the simple stories of street racing into elaborate heist plots with enormous action set pieces. This naturally made Lin one of the most in-demand directors around. He was so in-demand that another studio scooped him up for their own blockbuster, Lin jumping to Paramount to make “Star Trek Beyond.” This opened the door for another filmmaker of Asian descent to enter. James Wan would make the leap from horror films to blockbuster cinema with “Furious 7,” proving he wasn't only talented with low budget tales of ghosts and serial killers. It would be a great move for Wan, beginning the next chapter of his career.

Picking up from “Fast & Furious 6's” mid-credits teaser, “Furious 7” begins with the simplest of set-ups. Deckard Shaw wants revenge on Dom Torreto for what he did to his brother, Owen. First, he kills Han, then he attacks Hobbs, and lastly sets his sights on Brian O'Conor and his family. Dom rides into action, taking on Shaw personally. That's when the mysterious government agent, Mr. Nobody, steps in. He promises to help Dom take down Shaw if his team recovers a super-powerful surveillance device known as God's Eye, along with the hacker who created it. The “Fast” family are thrusts into an international adventure, involving terrorists and drones, while Dom and Shaw prepare for their inevitable face-off. 

By its seventh entry, the “Fast” franchise has long since outgrown its humble roots as a series about street racing. The last three installments established these movies are international affairs with more than a passing resemblance to Bond or Ocean. “Furious 7” pushes this conceit further. Throughout this adventure, the Torreto gang travels from London, to America to Japan, Azerbaijan, and Abu Dhabi, before heading back to Los Angeles for the big finale. Considering these movies have always been popular overseas, it's not surprising that the studio would insist “Furious 7” be more of a global adventure than ever before. 

In order to facilitate such a globe-trotting adventure, what probably should've been a simple revenge plot gets ridiculously convoluted. I guess the premise of  Shaw seeking revenge on Dom and the gang wouldn't have provided enough material for a 139 minute run time. Instead, the story's primary antagonist disappears for long stretches while the heroes pursue a practically unrelated plot device. Oh sure, there are token attempts to tie Shaw in with the entire God's Eye story line. They feel tenuous at best. “Furious 7” sometimes feels like two separate ideas for a sequel where hastily smashed together, in order to make a bigger – and, consequently, more crowded and contrived – follow-up.

Why screenwriter Chris Morgan – who has been shepherding this franchise since the third film – felt the need to get quite so complex with the plot is something I can only speculate on. The fact that this, the most ridiculously exaggerated of blockbusters, has to involve advanced surveillance technology and war drones raises some question. Are we so numb to the every day presence of these things, these aspect of the dystopian future we're all living in, that general audiences don't blink at their inclusion? Or is this some sort of half-assed commentary on the state of the world? It's hard to say, as no clear point is made about these things. Other than they are bad, I guess. At this point, the “Fast” movies are basically science fiction, making me wonder why Morgan and Wan didn't simply push the MacGuffin technology further into the realm of the impossible, rather than reminding us of U.S. war crimes in our goofball action movie.

How goofball is this sequel exactly? Paul Walker running up the side of an armored truck as it falls off a cliff is among the least memorable sights here. By this point, the “Fast” films are definitely self-aware of their own reputation for ridiculous bullshit. This is presumably why the movie commits to the utterly insane image of the heroes parachuting out of an airplane while inside their trademark cars. After all, it's accepted knowledge that Dom Torreto has superpowers as long as he's behind the wheel of an automobile. That's why he survives ramping off a cliff side, plummeting down the mountain or later using his vehicle as a battering ram against the villain's helicopter. The trademark action set pieces involve a souped-up sports car rocketing between not one but two skyscrapers. This level of CGI tomfoolery, watching the movie top itself in terms of over-the-top mayhem, is exactly the point of the franchise by this point. 

I can appreciate some utterly absurd, digital action shenanigans as much as the next guy. The one-on-one fight scenes continue to prove to be the bigger distraction here. The movie knows what side its bread is buttered on, by having its two biggest action heroes beat the shit out of each other within the opening minutes. The Rock and Jason Statham toss each other through glass walls and into desks, body slams and flying punches a-plenty going down. Of course, Vin and Statham have to duke it out before the end too, which they do in a similarly acrobatic melee. However, a surprise fight between an otherwise wooden Ronda Rousey, brought in as a special guest fighter primarily to grapple with Michelle Rodriguez, is a real highlight. It's certainly more believable than Paul Walker besting Tony Jaa, one of the great on-screen martial artists of our time, in a close quarters battle.

At this point, the size of the "Fast" family has started to grow a bit ungainly. There's about ten or eleven central characters here. Smartly, the script sidelines a few of them. Hobbs is laid up in the hospital for most of the movie, though the Rock is still available to kick some ass, carry a massive gun, and deliver macho one-liners. Jordana Brewster's Mia Torreto and Elsa Pataky's Elena are more-or-less written out of the story. Despite that, juggling the remaining cast members is getting shaky. Ludacris' Tej doesn't have much to do beyond press buttons behind a computer console, while Tyrese's Rome has officially been reduced to the role of dumb-ass comic relief. The jokes he's given are so clunky that you really wonder why he's being kept around at this point.

These cast are always expanding too. Kurt Russell drops in as Mr. Nobody, the government liaison. It's a role anyone could've played but Russell's ability to turn the hoariest of exposition into poetry elevates it greatly. Though the movie kindly gives him one action scene to himself. The rest of the new additions aren't as memorable. Nathalie Emmanuel is cute and all as Ramsey, the super-hacker at the plot's center, but she's not much more than a plot device. That's at least more than Djimon Hounsou gets, as the film's secondary baddie. All he really does is stand around and look intimidating, a total waste of Hounou's talents.

Ultimately, these are only minor supporting characters. When Jason Statham made his cameo appearance during the end credits of “Fast & Furious 6,” it was a moment designed to get a huge cheer out of the audience. Statham is of the same generation of action stars as Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. Getting all these modern icons in a movie together was a huge deal, obviously. Placing Statham as the antagonist against the rest of the team was another smart move, allowing the tough guy to do his thing. He swaggers through multiple scenes, glaring and coughing one-liners in that distinctive accent. The kind of indelible screen presence Statham has adds so much to a role that would've been utterly forgettable in anyone else's hands. He's an invaluable addition to the film.

“Furious 7” would become the biggest hit in the franchise yet, the first of the series to cross the billion dollar mark worldwide. It's easy to assume that the non-stop carnage of the last act might have something to do with this. International audiences are known to crave explosions and shoot-outs. Yet the continuous mayhem of the last act is honestly a bit deafening after a while. There's only so many scenes of machine guns shattering concrete and cars swerving around fireballs I can take before I get a bit numb to it. At over two hours long, “Furious 7” definitely wares the viewer down a bit before it's over. 

I think another factor, however, might've given this installment the extra novelty to make it the biggest of the series. We're all well aware of Paul Walker's unexpected passing before the film was released, ironically in a fast car not unlike any of the ones his character drives in this movie. As much as “Furious 7” is preoccupied with pyrotechnics, it's also something of a tribute to Walker. The role his character's family plays is repeatedly emphasized. A lengthy epilogue is inserted obviously as a way to honor Walker and send his character off. It's an emotionally overwrought moment, that seems weirdly maudlin if you somehow aren't aware of Walker's passing. It's nice too. Oversized sentimentality has always been the secret weapons of these movies and I'm glad the time was taken to make this ending meaningful.

While there are signs that James Wan brought his particular style to “Furious 7,” it's obviously this was a work-for-hire gig for him. He wanted to prove to studio execs that he could be trusted with the keys to a massive action franchise. Considering “Furious 7” went on to become one of the highest grossing movies of all time, I think he more than succeeded in that goal. Like all of these sublimely silly motion pictures, “Furious 7” is definitely entertaining. It's too absurd not to be. The constant need to top itself in terms of collateral damage and the struggles of balancing out such an overgrown cast does weigh the movie down some, even if Statham's sinew and some giant action shenanigans got me to smile too. [Grade: B-]

RECENT WATCHES: Annabelle (2014)

It is a horror cliché for a reason, I suppose. Dolls are mundane, harmless objects for many people, most associated with little girls and old ladies. The cherubic features of a baby doll should never invoke anything but soft, warm feelings of nostalgia or comfort in most grown adults, right? Obviously, this is not the case, thanks to our old friend, the Uncanny Valley. The painted, unmoving facial features of a doll, when contrasted with the desire to suggest a living being, can curiously produce an unsettling dissonance. Especially when those features become cracked or distorted, a common side effect of age or childhood play times. Since at least 1918, stories of creepy dolls have spread across the globe. The trope got a big boost in 1963, when an episode of "The Twilight Zone" sought to create chills from the smiling, pig-tailed visage of a girl's doll. In what must be a coincidence, Ed and Lorraine Warren would add a plain Raggedy Ann doll to their museum of supposedly haunted artifacts years after that, claiming a backstory suspiciously similar to the "Twilight Zone" episode and giving the doll the same name as a character in the show. These are the humble real world origins of "Annabelle." 

When featured in James Wan's "The Conjuring," Annabelle would be transformed into a grotesque porcelain doll, so obviously evil that you had to wonder why any child, ghostly or not, would want to play with it. Despite the cheesiness of the prop, the Annabelle prologue in "The Conjuring" was well executed and generated a lot of discussion. When Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema realized they might have a cash cow on their hands with this movie, they immediately started work on both a sequel to "The Conjuring" and a spin-off about that fucking ugly doll. With James Wan's frequent cinematographer John R. Leonetti in the director's chair, "Annabelle" would be rushed into theaters a year after "The Conjuring" was minted as a blockbuster. That suggested a slapdash job and Leonetti's previous directorial credits including "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" – one of the most bafflingly unfinished movies New Line ever put into theaters – didn't dissuade that notice. Neither did the finished film, which received much weaker reviews than its predecessor. I myself ranked it 84th out of the 89 new releases I saw that year. Now that a decade has somehow passed since "Annabelle's" initial release, I guess I have to wonder: Was I perhaps too harsh on little Annabelle? 

While "The Conjuring" was based on an exaggerated retelling of probably imagined events that happened forty years prior, "Annabelle" presents an entirely fictional origin for the creepy collectable. In 1969, med student John and his extremely pregnant wife Mia moved into a new home in the suburbs of Santa Monica, California. Their neighbors are a nice married couple whose teenage daughter ran off and joined a hippy commune. Mia collects dolls and John buys her a rare porcelain lady to complete a gap on her shelf. The following night, their neighbors' daughter returns... To murder mom and dad in an occult ritual meant to summon a demon. They head next door and attack Mia, the daughter – named Annabelle, obviously – slitting her throat above the doll. Mia insists her husband throw the toy out and the couple try to get on with their lives. Strange supernatural events begin to befall Mia while John is at work during the day. When a fire starts in the house, she is rushed to a hospital and gives birth to their daughter, Leah. The family moves to an apartment in Pasadena and life resumes normality for a while. Until Annabelle the Doll reappears in their lives, a demonic force determined to seize control of Mia and her daughter's lives. 

I recalled "Annabelle" as a totally irredeemable experience upon seeing it for the first time in 2014. My embarrassing original capsule review refers to it as "hella anticlimactic." Giving the prequel another look with perhaps slightly wiser eyes, I'll say this much. The cinematography is halfway decent. Leonetti has proven talented in that department, more so than in his thoroughly lackadaisical directorial credits. James Kniest is credited as the D.P. here, only the second time he stepped into that role on a feature film. (Before photographing some Mike Flannigan shows and, uh, "The Bye-Bye Man.") This suggests to me that Leonetti probably had a lot to do with the look of his movie here. Reoccurring shots of the apartment building towering overhead are kind of cool. A sequence where Mia is stalked through a shadowy floor of the building before retreating into the ominously slow elevator has some moody moments. I'll say that one jump scare is mildly clever. A little girl transforms into a screaming adult woman before lunging at Mia through a swinging door. That is executed with some skill. A shot of the doll levitating before a window with Mia's face in the foreground is mildly neat. 

Otherwise, it is difficult to summon much enthusiasm about "Annabelle." You can see what Leonetti and his team are aiming for. "Annabelle" is clearly modeled after "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Omen," the kind of classy demonic thrillers we associate with the late sixties and early seventies. You can tell this by the number of obvious references made to Polanski's masterpiece here. The couple being named Mia and John, foremost. A creepy apartment building, secondly. That the plot hinges on a pregnant woman imperiled by a Satanic scheme, obviously. For long stretches of the film, housewife Mia is left alone at home while her husband is away at work. This is when she is terrorized by ghastly visions and aggressive poltergeist activity. In "Rosemary's Baby," a young wife being trapped in the domestic setting while her husband is out in the world is part of a sinister conspiracy. Patriarchal gender roles and the commonplace settings they create become crushing tools in a ploy to rob a woman of control of her own body. In "Annabelle," the husband is harmless. He's clueless but not malicious. The demonic forces act on their own once summoned. Scenes with creepy kids, a noxious nursery, and the diabolical doll occur without any deeper subversion of these symbols of motherhood and innocence. "Annabelle" motions vaguely at much better movies while only containing a puddle's depth of its own. 

Part of this is because the cast are given extremely routine characters to play. The ironically named Annabelle Wallis plays Mia as a shrieking damsel in distress. Ward Horton is an ineffectual nerd as John. Tony Amendola is melodramatic as the Catholic priest who attempts to help. Another reason is because the script shows all the signs of being quickly thrown together. When Annabelle reappears at the couple's new apartment, Mia doesn't regard this as anything sinister. In fact, she decides to keep the obviously evil doll! Unlikely choices, such as leaving an uncooked tin of popcorn on the stove, moves the story forward. The level of power and ability the apparition has varies from scene to scene with no consistency. Mostly, the type of stuff the film seems to think is scary comes across as fairly hokey instead. A flickering television, especially in 1969, is not that sinister. A literal horned devil appearing is Halloween mask, dollar store shenanigans. A twitchy female spectre creeping around was old hat by 2014. A scare about a truck creaming a baby carriage is telegraphed far in advance and fumbled in execution. As is a similarly stretched out threat of Mia running her finger into her sowing machine. The film constantly teases endangering baby Leah but always wimps out at the last minute, making all of these moments feel like toothless provocations. The weirdest thing about the film's lame excuses for scares is that the titular doll itself, who you would think would be the star attraction, actually has very little involvement in most of the prequel's bugabooery. Annabelle herself is an incidental plot device to "Annabelle: The Movie." 

"The Conjuring," I believe mostly unintentionally, pushed a conservative, ahistorical moral about witches being evil and the family unit, and the Catholic Church especially, being very good. "Annabelle" is somehow more reactionary in its messaging than the film that spawned it. The prequel also has its fair share of treating the clergy as guardians of the righteous against evil spirits. (Albeit ineffectual ones.) Mostly, the film is wrapped up in hysterical fears about cultural outsiders. The Manson family murders are referenced in one scene. The hippy death cult that sets the bloodshed in motion are clearly inspired by Manson's Family and are explicitly more Satanic in nature. The hippies are depicted only as leering, cackling attackers. Their targets, meanwhile, are extremely square, church-going married couples. The message is clear: Sticking to the homestead and embracing traditional family roles are good while defying that is akin to devil worship and deranged murderers. The priest compares mothers to God in one scene, furthering this subtext that giving birth to and taking care of babies is the greatest role women can aspire to. 

Which brings me to Alfre Woodard as the kindly black woman who runs a bookstore and assists Mia in her battle against the forces of darkness. Woodard gets a sloppily included monologue that explains her backstory, which also includes a dead child of her own. This belabored piece of exposition sets up a last minute swerve that exists clearly to get the story out of the foregone conclusion it was pointing towards and making a happy ending. A happy ending for the nice white couple anyway. Not so much for the older black woman, who exists solely to provide much needed knowledge to the pasty protagonists and sacrifice herself for their safety. It goes hand in hand with the film's other messaging. If heterosexual married couples are good, motherhood is great, the Catholic Church are guardians, hippies are evil, and the devil is real, then people of color obviously only exist to serve the white master race. It's very, very weird to see a mainstream studio production pushing a message such as this.

Again, I don't think writer Gary Dauberman, John R. Leonetti, James Wan, or anyone else involved in the film are knowingly raging bigots pushing restrictive roles and messages in this film. I think "Annabelle" was rushed into production by WB to cash-in on the popularity of "The Conjuring" as quickly as possible. It didn't matter if the plot was half-formed, if the script was half-assed, and the subtext was repugnant. It only mattered that an "Annabelle" movie was in theaters a year after "The Conjuring," before the teenagers who buy tickets to these movies forgot about the creepy doll from the beginning of the other movie. The definition of striking while the iron is hot, of getting more product out there to keep demand up and people hungry for more, "Annabelle" is hastily assembled, glossy studio junk with little mind towards art or deeper ideas. But I don't think it's the worst ghost movie glop I've seen in my life either. Annabelle, the doll, is so not-scary as to become goofy. Goofy things are charming, maybe even cute, which means Annabelle herself might be endearing. The movie ostensibly about her beginnings but not really has no such attributes. [4/10]

Director Report Card: James Wan (2013) - Part Two

6. Insidious: Chapter 2

With the release of “The Conjuring,” James Wan had seemingly started the next chapter of his career. He'd soon be directing big budget blockbusters and have his own production company. However, a matter remained to be resolved. “Insidious” had been a hit, the success that allowed him to make “The Conjuring.” And Blumhouse is in the business of sequels, squeezing all the life out of the “Paranormal Activity” franchise until it was bled dry. Jason Blum insisted he wouldn't make a second “Insidious” without Wan and Leigh Whannall's involvement. Wan himself, expressing some frustration with the way “Saw” progressed without him, didn't want to abandon “Insidious” either. So a simple enough solution was decided on: The director would do both. He jumped over to New Line and started a new horror series with “The Conjuring.” Two months later, “Insidious: Chapter 2” would come out from Blumhouse. I guess being so in-demand that two separate studios want to work with you is probably a sweet deal for a filmmaker. Would it produce compelling cinema though?

Picking up shortly after the end of the first film, the police are questioning Renai Lambert over why the dead body of psychic Elise Rainier was in her house. Naturally, her husband is the prime suspect in the homicide. Renai has started to notice her husband is acting strange too. Josh wants to forget everything strange that happened and get on with their lives, despite the ghostly activity continuing as the family stays in mother-in-law Lorraine's house. Renai is right to be suspicious: When he astral projected into the Further, Josh's soul was left behind and now the spirit of a notorious serial killer is possessing his body. Lorraine and the surviving members of Elise's ghost hunter team attempt to unravel this mystery while Renai does what she can to protect her children from the thing inhabiting her husband's body. Ultimately, Dalton will have to use his abilities to enter the Further to rescue his dad.

The first “Insidious” hinted at the idea that childhood trauma is always revisited on the next generation, that the pain we experience as kids tend to influence what kind of parents we become. The sequel, smartly, foregrounds this idea further. In “Chapter 2,” Josh has now made the full jump from being an abused kid to becoming an abuser himself. He emotionally manipulates his wife and, by the end, is threatening to murder his kids. (Via an extended homage to “The Shining,” the ultimate example of using a ghost story as a metaphor for parental abuse.) Granted, this isn't technically Josh's fault. The ghost possessing him was also shaped and warped by a cartoonishly evil parent. Even in death, his mother's voice compels him to kill. This provides a narrative out for the dad character, preventing “Insidious: Chapter 2” from becoming an especially deep exploration of its theme. At the same time, at least the sequel is willing to follow through on the ideas present in the first one.  

Something I criticized about the first “Insidious” for how goofy and unintimidating I found its antagonists. Smartly, James Wan and Leigh Whannell realized that the Lipstick-Faced Demon was not going to become their next Jigsaw. They instead pivoted to the second most popular ghosts from the first movie, the so-called Bride in Black. (So obviously derivative of Susan Hill's the Woman in Black and a hundred other ghosts throughout folklore.) An elaborate backstory is invented for the briefly glimpsed spectre. The Bride is a crossdressing serial killer, a man named Parker who was forced to live as a girl by his insane mother, prompting him to dress up as a woman when he murdered his victims. That a mainstream horror movie still doing the “murderous transvestite” trope in 2013 was kind of surprising. Wan and Whannall have absolutely no interest in exploring any deeper meaning to this particular cliché. Indeed, the Bride in Black is not developed any further beyond this idea, existing as nothing but a spectral boogeyman/woman to antagonize the family.

While you can certainly question the taste of crafting a back story like this for your cheesy horror movie villain, I do think “Insidious: Chapter 2” did make a good choice in one regard. In the first film, the Lambert family was tormented by a whole host of ghouls with silly names. Aside from the Bride and the Lipstick-Faced Demon, there were the Doll Girl and that Trent Reznor lookalike and probably some others I've already forgotten. None made much of an impression. By centralizing its story around one primary antagonist, “Chapter 2” feels tells a more focused story. Similarly, while the evil spirits of the first “Insidious” had the vague motivation of wanting Dalton's power, “Chapter 2” has a very clear, understandable goal for its baddie. The former murderer wants more life, another life separate from his goading monster of a mother. It all works a lot more smoothly than a Darth Maul lookalike crawling around on the walls. 

I found the mythology the first “Insidious” attempted to weave to be extremely silly, drawing from New Age hokum about astral projection and the spiritual realm. “Chapter 2” doesn't dismiss any of these ideas. If anything, it focuses on them more, the sequel spending far more time in the misty, dark Further. However, Wan and Whannell did cook up some clever ideas with all its ghostly nonsense. It would seem time is nonlinear in the Further, allowing “Insidious: Chapter 2” to revisit the events of the first film and its own prologue from the other side. This creates some genuinely amusing surprises, the sequel folding in own itself and the events of part one. Rather than focus in on the silly stuff about the rules of the spirit realm, “Chapter 2” comes up with interesting narrative swerves of its own.

You can tell that Whannell, cranking out this script around the same time he was probably writing “Cooties” and whatever “The Mule” is, might've had to rush this one. “Insidious: Chapter 2”splits its screen time among two sets of characters for long stretches. We have the plot of the Lamberts, Josh's body being host to an evil spirit while his wife starts to catch on. Running parallel to that is Specs and Tucker from the first film, teaming up with Lorraine and another colleague of the late Elise, investigating the origins of the Bride in Black. The trio of ghost hunters were a high-light of the first film and, one suspects, there was a bit of a pull between wanting to tell the next part of the Lambert's story and give the fans more of these guys. Or, maybe, the production could only afford name actors like Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne for a few days. Dividing the movie between two separate groups is a little awkward, sometimes leading to “Insidious: Chapter 2” having a lumpy pacing. 

Another issues with this divide in the story is that one of these plots is a lot more compelling than the other. The coolest idea present in the story of the Lamberts is the gruesome inclusion that, as long as an undead spirit is inhabiting Josh's body, it is slowly falling apart. I like that little touch of body horror, of his teeth falling out. However, that plot thread is devoted to Renai trying to discover something we, the audience, is already aware of. Meanwhile, watching a trio of quasi-incompetent ghost hunters stumble around a dusty, cobweb strewn asylum in search of answers is the kind of silly horror theatrics I can get into. The bumbling investigators record some of their search to, drawing direct parallels to the found footage movies “Insidious: Chapter 2” was essentially looking to replace. 

Those scenes, of these hopelessly in-over-their-own-heads guys, rummaging through a spooky old hospital represents “Insidious: Chapter 2” probably at its best. I'm a sucker for classic horror atmosphere. Layering a setting in dust and spider webs already goes a long way towards making me like a movie. A slowly moving rocking horse is far creepier than any of the sequel's pasty-faced ghosts. Unfortunately, that subtly is in short supply here. “Chapter 2” utilizes blaring jump scares more than the original did. The soundtrack shrieks obnoxiously multiple times throughout, the audience always aware of the incoming noise thanks to the film growing suspiciously quiet beforehand. It's a wild abuse of, by far, my least favorite modern horror cliché, not generating scares so much as it leaves my ear drums battered and bruised. 

The constant barrage of deafening scares are hard to take seriously. As is an utterly hilarious sequence, when one of the reoccurring bad ghosts are tossed through a window in one smooth, continuous movement. It's another example of Wan and his team mistaking silly for scary... However, the longer “Insidious: Chapter 2” goes on, the sillier its antics get. The finale involve a frying pan being weaponized and some surprisingly theatrical melee combat. I laughed and I can't help but think I was supposed to. Whether Wan and his team realized the first movie got goofy as shit and knowingly went for camp this time out, or if I simply missed any intentional tongue-in-cheek quality in part one, it's clearly present here. “Insidious: Chapter 2” gets a little silly with it, knowingly so, and is all the better for it.

On account of getting killed off last time, Lin Shaye's Elise has a smaller role in the sequel, her part mostly being assumed by Steve Coulter's Carl. He's a psychic with the gimmick of communicating with the spirit world via die with letters imprinted on them. That's a dynamic idea and Coulter is affable in the part. He ends up as the straight man to Whannell and Angus Sampson, who remain comedic characters. As “Chapter 2” goes on and becomes sillier, you get the impression that the cast is absolutely in on the joke. Patrick Wilson, especially when playing the grimacing serial killer, is happily hamming it up. Danielle Bisutti, as the abusive ghost mother, also abandons all good taste in pursuit of playing a cartoonishly evil figure. These cast members, I do believe, know that they are being funny. That furthers my impression that we are not meant to take this motion picture entirely seriously. 

“Insidious: Chapter 2” has the same cinematographer as “Insidious: Chapter 1,” in the form of John R. Leonetti. It marks the last collaboration between Wan and the esteemed director of “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation,” who was pursuing a directorial career of his own once again. The sequel doesn't look that different from its predecessor. It is often too dark, with more overcast greyness and greenness to its look than I prefer. The last third gets a little shaky too. However, there is a flash of some vibrant reds in one scene, which I appreciate, and a few smooth camera movements that aren't bad. Wan is slowly moving away from the bland visuals of “Saw” and its like, which was hopelessly passé by 2013. 

At the box office, “Insidious: Chapter 2” still made a killing for Blumhouse and the other four production companies with logos before the opening credits. The sequel was made for five times the original's one million dollar budget and grossed 162 million, still providing a profitable return by any measure. Critically, the sequel was overshadowed by Wan's other horror movie with Patrick Wilson in 2013. That's a better movie, so I'm not surprised. However, I do think “Insidious: Chapter 2” is a marginal improvement over the first one, embracing the silliness of its own material while also finding a more consistent antagonist to base its story around. The sequel ends on a much more upbeat note than the original, before an uninspired extra scene is tagged on. This is essentially Wan bringing closure to the story he started in the first one while leaving the door open for further sequels that other directors could take over, suggesting he truly did have some personal attachment to these characters. [Grade: C+]

Director Card: James Wan (2013) - Part One

5. The Conjuring

In 1943, a teenager from Connecticut named Edward met a devout Catholic girl named Lorraine. Two years later, while on leave from his service in World War II, the couple would marry, officially becoming Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed claimed to have grown up in a haunted house while Lorraine professed to be a medium and clairvoyant. In 1952, the couple founded the New England Society for Psychic Research. By 1968, the Warrens had made a name for themselves as "psychic researchers," ghost hunters, and lecturers on spiritualism and demonology. They wrote about their adventures, tirelessly self-promoted, opened a museum of haunted artifacts in their home, and claimed to have investigated a mathematically impossible 10,000 cases. After their involvement with the (now thoroughly debunked) Amityville horror story, the Warrens had established themselves as the most famous "paranormal researchers" in the world. Actual evidence for any of their claims is either non-existent or doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Ed was always pushing for book and movie deals, while generally establishing a belligerent public persona. Lorraine has been described alternatively as a charlatan or a deluded woman thoroughly warped by her conservative Catholic beliefs, who always insisted on a paranormal explanation for everything. (Though was apparently fine with her husband keeping his 15 year old mistress in their house.)

In 1970, Carolyn Perron, her husband Roger, and their five daughters moved into a 235 year old farmhouse in Burillville, Rhode Island, a suburb of Providence. The couple had a tense marriage, Roger's work as a travelling salesman taking him away from home for long periods. During the ten years the family lived in the house, Carolyn and her daughters made numerous claims of ghostly activity. In her amateur research, Carolyn discovered the story of Bathsheba Sherman, a seemingly normal woman who lived next door to the home in the 1800s. After a child in her care supposedly died, Sherman became the subject of a local legend claiming she was a baby-murdering, devil-worshipping witch. Stories that none of her children lived past the age of four or that she was put on trial for piercing an infant's skull with a knitting needle are not supported by historical records. Carolyn reached out to Ed and Lorraine, who immediately claimed the house was haunted. Roger never saw or felt anything unusual. During a seánce with the Warrens, he might have thrown Ed out of the house. Eldest daughter Andrea would go on to write several self-published books about her mother's alleged experiences. The next family who owned the house never reported any weirdness. The current owners, who bought the home after it gained notoriety, run a social media page devoted to showcasing videos of "ghostly activity" captured in the home and are willing to rent rooms to visitors.

In the late eighties, Ed Warren met with producer Tony DeRosa-Grund and played him a tape of an interview with Carolyn Perrin. DeRosa wrote a treatment based on the story called "The Conjuring." He spent the next twenty years trying to get it turned into a movie. After a rewrite from Chad and Cary Hayes made the Warrens the heroes of the story, the script became the focus of a studio bidding war. Eventually, New Line Cinema got the rights. James Wan, hot off the success of "Insidious," came aboard as director. Lorraine served as a consultant on the film, which was briefly retitled "The Warren Files" before reverting back to its original name. The resulting film was a huge commercial and critical hit, solidifying Wan's reputation as a modern master of horror. And that's how the story of two grifters and an overworked mom's fantasies about her drafty old home launched a billion dollar franchise and the most successful horror series of all time. 

Taking the Warrens and Andrea Perron's claims at face value, “The Conjuring” fictionalizes nearly everything else. Ed and Lorraine Warren investigate the case of a haunted doll named Annabelle, explaining to her hapless owners that demonic entities seek to possess people, not objects. Two years later, the Perron family move into their new home. The family dog refuses to enter the house and dies in the night. Strange smells permeate the building, the middle daughter sleep walks, and a sealed up cellar is discovered. The paranormal activity seems to circle around Carolyn, who is attacked in the cellar one night. Ed and Lorraine are called in to investigate, quickly determining that the spirit of Satanic witch Bathsheba Sherman seeks to take Carolyn's body for her own and continue her murderous ways. Ed must perform an exorcism to save Carolyn from this evil.

In many ways, “The Conjuring” feels like the horror movie James Wan had been wanting to make his entire career. In retrospect, one can't help but see “Insidious” especially as a test run for this superior spook show. Wan's fascination with ghost hunting intensifies, trading out “Insidious'” New Age nonsense for Lorraine's distinctively different strain of Catholicism influenced nonsense. More importantly, “The Conjuring” builds on the kind of creaky, haunted house boo-show atmosphere Wan established in his last horror picture. You can see how his skills have improved in the very first sequence of “The Conjuring.” The prologue, devoted to the Annabelle haunting, nicely uses sound and off-screen shuffling to make a foreboding little chiller, operating practically as a short film in its own right. Meanwhile, the staring eyes, cracked porcelain face, and grimy clothes of Annabelle represents a maximizing of every creepy doll cliché. (Quite a step-up from the real Annabelle...) Wan learned his lessons from “Insidious” and “Dead Silence,” applying them both to this stellar sequence.

Another important lesson learned from his first haunted house movie is that a sense of normalcy must be established before it can be upset by the supernatural intrusion. “The Conjuring” does not go very far in defining the Perrons. Their five daughters, especially, are never given much individual personality. I can keep track of Christine and Cindy, because I recognize Joey King and Mackenzie Foy, and the youngest daughter gets the most screen time. Otherwise, the girls are interchangeable. However, we get enough scenes of the siblings playing and interacting, goofing off or complaining about farting in their sleep, to grasp their bond. Roger and Carolyn are seen flirting and talking enough that a pleasant coziness is successfully presented. This feels like a real family, full of people who love and care for each other. We may not learn a lot about these people but they sure do seem nice. Not the kind of folks who deserve to be pestered and attacked by demonic spirit at all!

Niceness is, in fact, an unexpected virtue of “The Conjuring” in general. Ed and Lorraine Warren might have been huge jerks in real life but, as portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, they are a loving couple completely devoted to each other. There are multiple scenes of the two being sweet, simply showing how in love they are with each other. Wilson and Farmiga have such an easy-going, lived-in chemistry together, truly giving the impression of a couple that have been together for a long time. We also see them interacting with and playing with their daughter – something they didn't do a lot of in real life, by the way – furthering the feeling of a comfortable family life. Farmiga adopts an utterly sincere attitude to Lorraine, someone determined to use her gifts to help people and protect those that need. She spits the movie's most ridiculous dialogue with complete conviction, selling the viewer on the idea that Lorraine definitely believes in this stuff. Wilson's Ed is more practical, with a quiet and very Dad-like sense of humor, and seems unsure of himself at times. They are ideal heroes to swoop in and save the imperiled family. When most horror movies are about people unexpectedly thrust into life-or-death situations and forced to survive, there is novelty to protagonists actively going out to fight evil. 

"Insidious" set out to be the kind of horror movie that gets its audience to jump as often as possible. With "The Conjuring," you can tell Wan was actively trying to capture a slightly subtler mood. Befitting its early seventies setting, a real attempt was made to capture the look and feel of an older film. Digital shine is discarded in favor of a grainier look, with more depth and warm colors to the frames. This extends to several scenes shot in-universe on a handheld camera and a very "Texas Chain Saw Massacre"-like scrolling wall of text near the beginning, which works surprisingly well. Naturalistic lighting adds to both the coziness of the interiors and the idea that something is lurking in the shadows. Clearly inspired by the original "Amityville Horror," John R. Leonetti's cinematography often adopts a roaming perspective. As if the camera has taken the point of view of an unseen spirit. It creates a feeling of the family's tranquil life being intruded upon. Once the paranormal activity escalates, the camera movements becoming faster and sharper, placing the viewer right in the middle of the terror the family is feeling.

The excellent look of the film proves that James Wan and his team have a proper grip on the mechanics of filmmaking. Specifically, the mechanics of horror filmmaking. "The Conjuring" expertly, almost clinically, deploys a number of tricks and techniques to creep the audience out. Sound is immensely important to capturing the haunted house feeling, that uncomfortable sensation that results from hearing a weird noise in the middle of the night. The sleepwalking daughter running into a cabinet is the kind of loud, repetitive sound that puts your neck hairs on end. This is expanded upon when Lorraine goes into a trance outside the house, the sound of a noise swinging overhead increasing until we finally see the dead body dangling over Ed's shoulder. We peer into the spinning mirror of a music box, the film anticipating us looking in the blurry reflection for some unsettling presence. Wan cribs from the "Saw" series' biggest rival by including some gritty, unsettlingly real looking found footage into a few sequences. It all builds towards the scariest moment in the film, when Carolyn is exploring the creepy cellar. She strikes a match to illuminate the dark, shadows all around her, the camera close on her face. The suspense escalates nicely towards a sudden burst of violence. 

Honestly, "The Conjuring" is so good at utilizes familiar techniques to make a scary movie, that it almost comes across as cynical at times. The last truly effective jolt in the movie, in my opinion, is when we see the hairs on one of the girls' head float upwards, grabbed by an unseen force, before she's flung across the room in a well executed far shot. This proceeds a last act where "The Conjuring" can no longer resist the silliness at the center of its heart. After "The Amityville Horror," the other seventies shocker Wan is clearly most indebted to is "The Exorcist." The gross-out factor of projectile vomiting, a feminine but scarred up face, and a levitating object all appear. In this last act, "The Conjuring" abandons quieter chills in favor of louder, flashier techniques. There's some distracting CGI and jolting jump scares as the film moves towards a battle-between-good-and-evil climax. That feels at odds with the goals of the rest of the film, which was more about the humble comforts of home and family being disturbed by outside forces and not such grandiose notions as God and the Devil.

That presents the biggest problem with "The Conjuring," one all of the most well executed scares in the world would have trouble overcoming. It's not only that "The Conjuring" presents two "investigators" of dubious moral merit as stand-up citizens and heroes, when they were nuts at best and full-on con artists at worst in actuality. The film embraces the Warrens' beliefs without an ounce of irony or criticism. In the film's world – which is ostensibly presented as our world, given all the "based on a true story" branding – witches are real and they are evil. They worship Satan, who is definitely real, and sacrifice babies to him with some regularity. The script goes so far as to connect Bathsheba Sherman – again, who was an actual human being who lived and died – to the Salem Witch Trials. I thought we, as a culture, understood that no actual witches or warlocks lived in Salem, given the meaning the term "witch hunt" has taken on? Nevertheless, "The Conjuring" hinges on the idea that demonic spirits exist and that they make humans do horrible things, to mock God and weaken our collective integrity. Within this moral framework, the Catholic Church is presented as the ultimate force of good. The climax revolves around Ed performing an exorcism after the Vatican drags its feet in approving such a ritual. God is what opposes the forces of evil and the Catholic Church, and all its doctrine and members, are presented as his agents on Earth. 

It is, to say the least, somewhat irresponsible for a major Hollywood production to take such a stance. Here in reality, organized networks of Satanists conspiring to traffic and abuse children exist strictly within the realm of urban legends and the paranoid fantasies of right-wing reactionaries. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, doesn't exactly have the best record on protecting the welfare of children. Ya know, horror movies have been embracing the tenets of the Satanic Panic, without much subversion or criticism, for decades. Such plot points residing within films from the seventies and eighties is at least understandable. That was a less informed time, before the internet made the totality of all human knowledge accessible to anyone at any time. Despite that, horror films like this and the "Paranormal Activity" sequels, that pushed fear-mongering delusions about evil Satanists operating in the shadows, flourished in the 2010s. Looking back twelve years later, after PizzaGate and QAnon became full-blown cultural movements, when nonsensical conspiracy theories about devil worshipers have flourished and become pathways to all manner of dangerous misinformation, when a widespread shift in the national mood towards paranoia and fear over any one that is "different" is evident, it's hard to think of "The Conjuring" as merely a harmless horror movie. 

I don't think James Wan is a MAGA bro or an evangelical Christian extremist. I don't think he intentionally inserted a right-wing agenda into his spooky scary ghost movie, as part of some culture war shenanigans. If anything, I think "The Conjuring" was simply an act of franchise engineering on the director and his production team's behalf. The film presents the Warrens as superheroic figures, Lorraine's second sight acting as a power of sorts. Bathsheba is our villain with a catchy name. The museum full of other cursed artifacts presents countless openings for stories, past and future. "The Conjuring" concludes with a scene teasing the Warrens' most famous adventure, very much within the Marvel Cinematic Universe style. The superhero-ification of Ed and Lorraine means buying in completely to the insane bullshit they preach, a probably unintentional alignment with the revival of the worst parts of the Satanic Panic. 

If you can look past all of that, "The Conjuring" is a fine horror movie. The stars are endearing. Wan is operating at maximum strength as an engineer of creepy moments and full-speed thrills. It pays extensive homage to the genre's past while operating as a decent film in its own right. Really, if it was about some made-up ghost hunters, I would almost assuredly like it a lot more. Aligning itself with real world hucksters, and never pausing once to consider if maybe some of these beliefs are silly or even dangerous, keeps me from enjoying the film as the blockbuster horror entertainment that it is clearly meant to be. The mob has long since spoken, "The Conjuring" already having etched a place for itself in the pantheon of modern horror classics though. For better or worse. [Grade: B]

RECENT WATCHES: Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

By 2013, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had come to rule the multiplexes. Other studios were eager to copy that successful formula. While there's been no shortage of superhero epics in the last decade, Universal managed to retrofit the “The Fast and the Furious” into something like their own Marvel universe  in one important way. That would be the mid-credit teasers setting up the next adventure. “Fast Five” ended in a fairly final place but a last minute scene happily set up another installment. Two years later, that promise would be delivered on with “Fast & Furious 6.” Justin Lin was back behind the camera, with the all the important cast members back too. Predictably, it was another enormous hit but could it top the last one in terms of action?

Hobbs is pursuing an internationally wanted super-criminal by the name of Owen Shaw. Shaw is attempting to assemble a “Nightshade” device, a weapon that can shut off all power in a country, and only needs one more part to complete it. He decides to lure Dom Torreto and the rest of his crew out of retirement to help him. He accomplishes this with one important clue. Letty, Dom's presumed dead wife, is part of Shaw's team. This convinces Dom, Brian, and the rest to gather in London and take down this newest threat, all while attempting to figure out what happened to Letty.

We're now six installments into this turbo-charged franchise and it's built up a surprisingly lovable ensemble. One of the simplest joys of “Fast & Furious 6” is simply watching these characters bounce off each other. The film delights in pairing these guys up in novel ways. Such as Rome and Han discussing the nuances of relationships or Rome and Tej shit-talking while playing around with a massive spear gun. Gal Gadot's Giselle – definitely the least well-defined of this troupe –  gets some charming moments, when interacting with Sung Kang or new recruit to the team, Gina Carano. We've built up enough of an attachment to this group that seeing them interact and screw around is as much fun as the enormous action set-pieces.

Something the “Fast” films have lacked, up to this point, are truly memorable enemies. The last two movies especially – I'm excluding Hobbs from this, as he eventually joins the good guys, "Dragonball Z" style – had indistinct crime bosses as their antagonists. “Furious 6” manages to cook up a supervillain worthy of its increasingly overpowered heroes. Luke Evans – who Hollywood was really trying to turn into a star in the 2010s – appears as Owen Shaw. He's a super-capable bad-ass with specialized gadgets and weapons at his disposal, including hockey pucks he can attached to other cars to control them. Shaw also has a team of henchmen identified as evil counterparts of Dom's crew. Evans can certainly handle being a ruthless baddie with a sinister sneer, despite the script providing him with little in the way of depth.

Not that character depth is what we watch these movies for. No, we sit down for a “Fast” movie because we want to see some gravity defying stunts. “Furious 6” certainly delivers in that regard. Shaw's coolest gadget is an armored dune-buggy designed to launch other cars into the air, which happens repeatedly. I really never get tired of seeing cars corkscrew through the air. Probably the movie's trademark sequence involves a tank being unleashed on a freeway. This is a sequence that only escalates in absurdity as it goes along. Countless cars are pancaked under the tank treads, a muscle car is slowly shredded, and the climax to the scene – involving Vin Diesel sailing through the air in slow-motion – is hysterical. As memorable as this particular sequence is, I'm glad the movie made room for some close quarters melees too. It would've been a waste to slot Carano and Joe Taslim in the cast and not having them do some fighting. Taslim's fight scene, which involves kicking Tyrese through multiple planes of glass, is probably the best.

Melodrama is nothing new to this particular franchise. “Furious 6” features that most hackneyed of soap opera plot devices: Amnesia. Letty is working with the bad guys, and was thought dead, because she has no memories of her past with Dom. This is a solid way to retcon Michelle Rodriguez's clumsy death in the previous movie, while also giving her a juicier character arc. This is far from the movie's only narrative contrivances. There's a lengthy subplot that drops Brian into prison, a long ways to go just to confirm a simple plot point. Because movies were still ripping off “The Dark Knight” at this point, the bad guy gets captured on-purpose as part of his master plan. I don't think a “Fast and the Furious” movie needs a story that takes this many detours is my point.

While its cast of characters are doubtlessly a benefit to this film, by the final act, I was losing track of where everyone was a little bit. The elaborate finale, which involves dragging a massive air bus to the ground, has each member of Dom's team sparing off with their own partner or adversary. So much is happening, with the film cutting back and forth between each confrontation, that you feel a bit overwhelmed. The obvious money-shots in these scenes, such as Vin and the Rock taking down a musclebound baddie together, get lost in the shuffle of so much happening.

Despite some serious flaws, “Fast & Furious 6” still places high in my personal ranking of this franchise. The action sequences are really fabulous, with the movie balancing genuinely impressive stunt work and amusingly absurd digital fakery. The cast is still fun to hang out with and the script provides a suitably intimidating adversary. I don't really ask for much more from these films than that. [7/10]

RECENT WATCHES: Fast Five (2011)

“Fast & Furious” ended on a cliffhanger, suggesting Universal was very confident in the retooled franchise. The film was another hit, paving the way for “Fast Five” two years later. This seems to be the point where public opinion on the series started to shift. The first four were dismissed by critics and divisive among action fans. They had passionate defenders but a large group derided the “Fast” films as dumb-ass shit for dumb-ass shitheads. “Fast Five,” however, successfully transformed this into a series that reveled in its own ridiculous awesomeness. This kind of beyond-the-beyond audacity – which recalled the over-the-top action classics of the eighties – quickly won over a lot of folks I trust, really getting my attention. 

After busting Dom out of prison, the Torettos and Brian relocate to Rio de Janeiro. In need of cash, they agree to a risky heist aboard a moving train. It quickly goes pear-shaped but after the gang makes off with an especially valuable car. Inside the vehicle is a chip containing all the financial information of Hernan Reyes, the most powerful drug lord in Brazil. After Mia announces she's pregnant with Brian's child, Dom decides they are going to steal Reyes' millions as one last job. A group of new and old faces are called in to assist such an ambitious heist. Meanwhile, DSS agent Luke Hobbs – believing the Toretto gang murdered several DEA agents – pursues the racers ruthlessly. With Reyes' men also on their trail, things quickly escalate. 

The fourth “Fast” movie moved the series in the direction of globe-trotting action extravaganza. The fifth entry presents a more unified vision for the franchise by literally bringing together the divergent casts from the previous films. Matt Schulze's Vince returns for the first time since the original. “Tokyo Drift's” Han becomes a major player, following his cameo in part four. Ludacris' Tej and Tyrese's Rome from “2 Fast 2 Furious” join the rest of the team. Even Gal Gadot's Gisele from the last one comes back. More familiar faces show-up during the mid-credits scene. When so many long-running series are happy to slam the reboot button, I'll admit that “Fast Five” embracing the history of the franchise is charming. 

If I knew nothing else about these movies going into it, I knew that it was all about one uniting theme: Family. This really comes to the forefront in this installment. Dom agrees to one last job precisely because he wants his little sister and in-coming nephew to be taken care of. Vince is immediately forgiven for any past transgression and accepted back into the group entirely because he's part of Torreto's found family. That idea is presumably why this installment brings back so many established characters, to emphasize that family isn't just about blood but about who you choose. As goofy as this premise is in execution – some of these folks have known each other for a few days – it can't help but play out as kind of sweet. Vin's big speech around barbecue and beer... It's cute, ya know? Makes it feel like you're hanging out with these misfits and goofballs too.

Of course, to go up against such a memorable group of characters, you need an especially colorful antagonist. The film found that in the form of Dwayne Johnson, pro-wrestler turned one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He plays Hobbs, a super-tough agent sent to hunt down our heroes. The role utilizes Johnson's best attributes. That would be his massive physical presence and his way with a trash-talking one-liner. Hobbs isn't only a mountain of a man, clearly capable of taking down any opponent he encounters. He's also a fast-talker, casually hurling insults and colorful turns-of-phrases at those around him. In other words, the Rock was exactly the kind of bigger-than-life character necessary to play an opposing force 

The movie is well aware of what the Rock's presence means too. One of the show-stopping set pieces is a melee between Johnson and Vin Diesel, which features both men getting tossed through multiple walls. That's one of my favorite action beats in the film and also one of its more grounded. This is, after all, a movie that begins with a car jack-knifing a bus and causing it to flip through the air several times. That's not the real opening set piece either. That would be a ludicrous – but not Ludicris, he shows up later – sequence involving a truck, a train, a bridge, and a slow-mo dive into a river. The movie never quite tops that moment but its finale, where a massive bank vault dragged behind a muscle car and weaponized, sure as hell tries. Most impressively, the movie uses more practical effects than you might think. That gives these ridiculous stunt sequences a lot more heft and weight, making them exactly the kind of crazy action filmmaking I'd admire.

Built around these over-the-top sequences of vehicular mayhem is a fairly standard heist movie. I think anybody familiar with the genre knows that the plan set in place early in the film will naturally go wrong. The movie wouldn't be telling us this information if it didn't plan on subverting it. What's most fun about heist pictures is watching a group of bandits with highly specialized skills working out a complex scheme to solve some convoluted problem. “Fast Five” provides us with just that, as Dom's gang perfects a number of technique and wacky schemes to break into the vault central to the story. A moment involving exploding toilets is especially amusing.

“Fast Five” really feels like it could've been the final installment in the series, leaving all of our misfit heroes in a comfortable place. Of course, things were really only beginning for this gang at this point. If I've been a little baffled by the massive popularity of these movies up to now, “Fast Five” is when it really started to click into place for me. It's big, loud, and dumb but I can't deny that I didn't enjoy myself the whole time. [7/10]

Director Report Card: James Wan (2010)

4. Insidious

With “Saw,” James Wan had launched the most popular horror franchise of the 2000s. His subsequent motion pictures had failed to duplicate that breakout success. By 2010, the “Saw” series had been bled dry by yearly sequels. Also clipping into the “Saw” installments' box office by this point was “Paranormal Activity,” a new horror franchise cranking out annual movies. Rather than try and beat 'em, Wan decided to join 'em. He teamed up with Oren Peli and Jason Blum, those responsible for the rival series, to create a new horror film. Concerned that the graphic gore of the “Saw” movies had convinced people he only made splatter flicks, Wan and Leigh Whannell's next collaboration would focus on the classical idea of a haunted house. Supposedly made for one and a half million dollars, “Insidious” would gross over one hundred times its budget at the box office. The film's success would further cement Blumhouse as the defining mainstream flavor of horror going into the new decade, launch a series of its own as well as numerous other haunting flicks with descriptive one-word titles, and proved that James Wan wasn't going away any time soon.

The Lambert family has a seemingly happy existence. Josh and Renai have recently moved into a wonderful new home, with their kid in tow: Oldest son Dalton, middle child Foster, and newborn baby Kali.. After an incident in the attic, Dalton falls into a coma that no doctor can explain. This proceeds increasingly frightening paranormal activity, seemingly targeting Renai. The family moves into a new home but the haunting only intensifies. Desperate, Josh and Renai bring in a team of psychic researchers. They believe Dalton has astral projected into an extra-dimensional realm called the Further, attracting the attention of malevolent spirits and a red-faced demon. Dalton is awoken by the team's efforts but the horror is far from over. He inherited his powers from his dad, Josh having a long history with these particular otherworldly entities. 

Wan and Whannell have spoken of their influences over the years, how “The Amityville Horror” and the case files of the Warrens scared the crap out of them as kids. You can see echoes of both of these in “Insidious.” As in “Amityville,” this is the story of a husband and wife with a couple of kids moving into a new house, only to be beset by supernatural terror. As in reality, parapsychologists appear to investigate. Another likely influence was “Poltergeist,” as both this film and that one have the family banding together when one of the children is “taken.” However,  “The Amityville Horror” was as much about the financial pressures that tear the family apart as the paranormal ones. While “Poltergeist” was a story of a family realizing the love they have for each other is more valuable than their Reagan era luxuries. Which raises the question: What is “Insidious” about? 

It's not about money, that much is clear. Renei is a stay-at-home mom, who writes songs in her spare time. Josh is a teacher, somehow able to take care of three kids, a wife, and a new house on that meager salary. When the otherworldly incidents become more than Renei can handle, she demands that the family moves into another house. Which they do, seemingly without any further financial burden being placed on them. We do see the two starting to argue as Dalton's condition remains unchanged and weird shit continues to happen, with Josh staying longer at work seemingly to avoid the problems at home. This amounts to all of one scene though. The couple otherwise seem happily married, loving all three of their kids. “Insidious” seems to resist the traditional subtext of the haunted house genre, in which the disturbance in the home is much more than spiritual.

In that case, what is “Insidious” about? The film's pithy tagline was “It's not the house that's haunted.” This is all but repeated in dialogue. Much as in Peli and Blum's “Paranormal Activity” franchise, it is a person that the unrestful spirits are attached to, not a structure. Josh's mom has photographs of the boy from his youth, a ghostly presence lurking in the background of each. He has totally suppressed and forgotten the childhood horror that apparently haunted him. Despite that, it has returned to infect his son, who is now more at risk than he ever was. When paired with the downbeat ending, “Insidious” becomes a story of how the past is never totally done with us. Josh may have buried his childhood trauma but it has been revived in his own son, much the way a genetic mental illness, the cycle of abuse, or alcoholism reoccurs throughout a family bloodline. 

Whether “Insidious” is knowingly invoking themes of childhood abuse or not, there's definitely one point the film seems to be making: The supernatural is real and only professional ghost hunters can help. Once medium Elise Rainier and her team of parapsychology researchers enter the film, “Insidious” uncritically embraces new age bullshit. Spirit photography is invoked. Rainer's sidekicks, Specs and Tucker, use all sorts of heat and energy detecting gizmos to determine something is amiss. Why they need to do this, when Elise is psychic and can receive visual impressions of these demonic spirits, I don't know. All of this climaxes with the script's embracing of astral projection as a literal fact. I love horror movies and I love folklore. I don't mind any number of goopy, New Age hooey being included in a horror film to build up its own story or ideas. However, considering “Insidious” is a test run for “The Conjuring” – a full-term reputation laundering for a pair of fraudsters and kooks – it's hard to perceive its embracing of ghost hunting hokum and astral plain nonsense as anything but a sincere endorsement. 

This reveals another problem with “Insidious.” It is, in fact, an extremely silly motion picture. James Wan and his team are adapt at the brass tacks techniques of engineering effective scares. The first half of the movie features multiple, quiet and still shots of the family in their home. This establishes a sense of place and, with it, a sense of normality. The mundane first act is devoted to Renei playing with Dalton and the other kids, the couple bonding, and other scenes of domestic tranquility. The film is establishing a “normal” world, one any of us can recognize, that will soon be disrupted and distorted by the horrors to come. Wan is good at this and “Insidious” is genuinely most effective in its earlier scenes, when the creeping sense that something is going to go very wrong, very soon is unavoidable. 

If “Insidious” was Wan's attempt to prove he didn't need the grisly violence of the “Saw” movies to scare an audience, it's a mixed showcase. On one hand, a decent attempt is made to build a creepy ambiance. The ghostly activity starts small, with an alarm going off or a shadowy figures spotted on the wall. Too often, however, these scenes pay off in the loudest and most obnoxious types of shrieking scares imaginable. This is most apparent in one of “Insidious'” trademark sequences. Barbara Hershey as Josh's mom – named Lorraine, another likely nod to the Warrens – relates a nightmare she had that further suggests the demonic spirit at the story's center. It's an effectively spooky moment that builds to a head in bright red and black face paint standing behind Patrick Wilson and roaring like a tiger. That's supposed to be a big scary moment but it comes off as thuddingly loud and rather goofy to me. 

Sadly, that is an omen of things to come. “Insidious” looses a lot of steam after the Lamberts move to a new home, all the work it did establishing a sense of location in the first hour going out the window. At that point, the ghosts stop messing around and start getting in people's faces. A boy dressed like a Dickensian ragamuffin leaps from a closest at Renei. In one utterly hilarious scene, little Dalton springs to life and starts throwing grown men around a room while a stringy-haired goth dude licks people's faces. In its last act, “Insidious” sends Patrick Wilson through a carnival-style house of horrors, the man walking from room to room as he encounters one ghostly tableau after another. All of these spectres utilize well-trotted visual clichés. There's a ghostly bride, people smiling ominously, and a demon with cloven hooves who sharpens his nails like Freddy Krueger. By far the most egregious miscalculation made is trying to mine an old song for post-modern creepiness. Wan chooses Tiny Tim's trilling, ukulele strumming weirdo novelty classic “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” That's a song I associate with listening to Dr. Demento, not with otherworldly horrors.  

“Insidious” never blinks either, playing all of its goofy attempts at scares with utmost seriousness. The film only grows more humorless as it goes along, fully invested in its own dumb-ass mythology. Rather than simply calling its spirits ghosts or demons, the script quickly starts to throw around its own language. “The Further” is the term it cooks up for the extra-dimensional world its nasty spooks hang out in. When paired with multiple dead-serious monologues about the ominous and evil forces that nearly claimed Josh as a youth, and the powers of hypnosis, you get the feeling that Wan and Whannell thought they were writing the horror version of “Lord of the Rings” or something. Most long running horror series invent a fabulous mythology out of happenstance, the natural extension of running a simple idea out as long as you can. “Insidious” wants that right from the get-go and doesn't have the handling on modern folklore the way, say, “The Blair Witch Project” did.

Perhaps I'm overthinking all of it. James Wan set out to dispel the notion that he was only a gore guy. Obviously, “Insidious'” box office success and the subsequent decade of hits Wan has directed proved that again and again. However, “Insidious” actually has a lot more in common with Wan's breakout film than he'd probably like to admit. John R. Leonetti, his “Dead Silence” and “Death Sentence” cinematographer, returns to photograph this one. It continues the sickly green and washed-out grey color palette that characterizes Wan's work up to this point. In its last act, increasingly frantic camera movements – akin to the shock metal music video style editing that characterized “Saw” – put in a few token appearances. The bloody stumps and mangled bodies have been left behind but the same visual quirks are very much present.

“Insidious'” sense of self-seriousness is present in most of its performances. Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne do fine in the early scenes, projecting enough warmth for you to buy them as loving parents and a happy couple. However, as the material grows more ridiculous, it becomes more difficult to recognize their behavior as those of human beings. Genre stalwart Lin Shaye appears as Elise and it's nice to see her with a bigger role. She's probably the most adapt member in the cast at making the script's pseudo-scientific trash believable. Leigh Whannell himself and Angus Sampson as her sidekicks contribute a little bit of comic relief, something the film desperately needed more of. 

With a score of skittering ambiance and shrieking strings from Joseph Bishara, “Insidious” set out to be a scary movie for a mass audience. It must have worked, considering the box office receipts and several sequels it generated. I suppose people flocked to the movie, threw their popcorn up into the air, squealed with delight at the jump scares, and left wanting to know more about its belabored backstory. There is technical skill on display in “Insidious” that I can admire. Wan and his teams know the notes to play but they don't seem to have a grip on – if you'll excuse the pun – the spirit of the thing. Not that the majority of people agree with me, as “Insidious” is widely accepted among many as a modern horror classic. I guess, by some measure, ghost movies are preferable to overly slick remakes, floppy found footage flicks, and same-y torture horror. I guess. [Grade: C+]