Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
14 Years Later, This Team-Up Between 2 Modern Horror Legends is Still One of the Scariest Movies Ever
James Wan and Leigh Whannell's classic haunting story is still a masterclass in excess.
The early collaborations of horror filmmakers Leigh Whannell and James Wan are an exercise in rising ambitions. They launched their respective careers with the breakthrough hit Saw, which for all its conceptual heft is actually a very intimate, clever little thriller. Then they made two Saw sequels which allowed them to build on the first film's success in interesting, increasingly disgusting ways. Then, they gave us Dead Silence, a puppet-driven ghost story with fairy tale allure and great setpieces.
Then came Insidious (now streaming on Peacock).
Wan and Whannell have both gone on to have massive careers in genre storytelling, Wan with things like The Conjuring, Aquaman, and the upcoming Peacock series Teacup; and Whannell with Upgrade, The Invisible Man, and the upcoming Wolf Man movie. Because of their sheer scale of their successes both separately and together, Insidious can often feel like another stepping stone on the path to bigger things, a franchise launcher that just made sense at the time. Look again, though, and you'll find a masterclass in horror excess, a movie that's very, very good at throwing absolutely everything it can think of at the screen, and somehow making it all stick.
The film is one of many, many new horror films hitting Peacock in time for Spooky Season, so if you haven't ever seen it, or just haven't revisited it in a while, it's time to step back and see for yourself just how well Insidious works.
How Insidious Is a Masterclass in Excess
Insidious begins with all the trappings of a very typical haunted house story. We meet the Lambert family –– father Josh (Patrick Wilson), mother Renai (Rose Byrne), and son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) –– and soon find some strange things going on in their home. It all culminates as Dalton encounters a mystery presence and falls into a mysterious coma. That's bad enough, but things only get weirder from there.
While Dalton sleeps, the house seems to go crazy with signs of a haunting, and things eventually get so terrifying that the Lamberts move, only to find that the haunting has apparently followed them to their new house. What's more frightening, especially for us as an audience, is that the haunting doesn't seem to be centralized around any particular phenomena or even a single ghost. We get everything from the red-faced figure known as the Lipstick Demon to a creepy old woman to a little boy in old-timey clothes, and they just keep coming no matter where the Lamberts are or what Dalton's state seems to be at the time.
There's a sense, very early in this film, that we're dealing with something different, and not just because the spirits haunting the family keep changing the game. There are a lot of haunted house movies out there which seem to build their stories around "Wouldn't this ghost look cool?" ideas, and that means things start to stretch to accommodate the ghosts rather than simply telling a convincing story. Here, we get the same sense of variety, but with the added feeling that we're in good hands, that things are being controlled by smart filmmakers with a proven track record. That means that, when the truth finally drops, Insidious can go even crazier.
Heart in the Horror of Insidious
What's ultimately going on in Insidious (spoiler alert for a 14-year-old movie) is that Dalton is actually causing the hauntings by astrally projecting himself into a realm called The Further, where all kinds of spirits lie in wait and where evil entities like the Lipstick Demon are fighting to get out. It's not just that he's haunted, it's that he's a conduit for ghosts of all kinds. This both explains the massive onslaught of ghosts from earlier in the story and buys Wan and Whannell a lot of goodwill to build their story out as they see fit. That means Insidious just keeps coming at us with more and more haunted mayhem, and it all still works.
But there's another key to this movie that goes beyond its horror, expertly timed out by Wan and crafted in script form by Whannell. Because this is a story not just about a little boy, but about a family, we get that Poltergeist-inspired sense of heart, as Josh and Renai work to do whatever it takes to get their son back. The emotional heft of the piece is particularly acute when it comes to Josh, who must dig deep into his own past and fight for his son, despite always feeling a bit insecure as a father and a caretaker, particularly now that Dalton's fallen ill. It's Whannell's ability to not just layer these elements in, but to make them just as powerful as the horror, that makes Insidious really hold up. It's no wonder it inspired several sequels (Insidious: Chapter 2 is streaming on Peacock as well), but all these years later, the original is still the best.
Insidious is now streaming on Peacock.
