Insidious

First, the good news: the first 75 minutes (give or take) of this film are legitimately scary. The bad news: it takes a wrong turn into Silly Town near the end.
Insidious is the story of a family who move into a new house only to be besieged by supernatural entities. There are twists on the formula, though- the ideas behind why the entities are there and why the son is in a "coma" are novel. The film sets up an atmosphere of dread early on that leaves the viewer anxiously searching the frame for something unpleasant to materialize. However, there are entire scenes here lifted from other films.  I appreciate the writer's (Leigh Whannell of SAW fame) homage to The Changeling, and realize that the audience to whom this film has been marketed are probably unfamiliar with a 1980 Canadian film starring George C. Scott, but it's a pretty wholesale lift.  Fans of the haunted house subgenre will see some familiar tropes- a bit of Poltergeist here, a dash of Supernatural there, and also amusing is the stunt casting of Barbara Hershey, who was in the infamous ghost-rape film, The Entity. There's even an amusing little shout out to SAW- it's a visual and I won't ruin it for you.
What went wrong is that Whannell probably had a list of creepy images he wanted to fit into the film, and as time goes on they start to feel shoehorned in, creating the sense that the film doesn't know what story it's telling.  The sequence in "The Further" gets a bit too Disney Haunted Mansion for me, and this is where it feels like everything but the kitchen sink got added. It really screws up the momentum of the film. The one scene that took me out of the film completely, though, was a completely random Jeepers Creepers scene toward the very end of the film. You'll instantly know it when you see it-I'm not really spoiling here, as it has NOTHING TO DO with anything . OK, that's not entirely true, it is a plot device, but it just feels so out of place as to be silly. Afterward, the film is back on track with a twisty ending.
And speaking of creepy images...credit where credit is due! There are some deeply unsettling things happening here. The initial use of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" gave me a bit of a wiggins. There's a split second that sets you up for it and you'll miss it if you blink. The scene goes on a bit too long, but the initial creep factor is very high. The entire tone of the film worked for me- very tense and ominous. I've heard a few complaints regarding the music, but I thought it was fantastic. Nothing says old fashioned haunted house fun like screaming violins! It's disruptive and disturbing, and I mean that in the best possible way. The actors are uniformly solid, even the brats, and Lin Shaye is perfect as the psychic. Leigh Whannell shows up with Angus Sampson to do a Ghostfacers riff, providing a bit of comic relief.
I'm not getting too specific with plot points because I don't want to ruin the turns the story takes later in the film, but I've gone a bit further with potentially spoilery info below.
What scares us is so subjective that it is sometimes hard to tell what will make audiences respond. Some people will see this film and think it's intensely silly. I think that despite my few complaints, it does a good job balancing out the genuinely spooky with the potentially stupid, thanks particularly to a committed and talented cast. All in all, Insidious is a fun little film with a few unexpected twists, and it's worth seeing for the initial scares.


WARNING! SPOILERS FOLLOW!

What I liked: The set up to the haunting, with logical explanations available for the initial weirdness, provided a tense atmosphere that set the tone for the entire film.
                     The whole astral projection thing was a refreshing take on the possession subplot.
                     The scene where for a split second you see the ghost kid in the laundry room facing the wall, then see it dancing through the window was frakking creepy!
                     The initial sighting of the Darth Maul demon was a proper jump scare.
                     When the younger son tells Mom he's scared of Dalton (coma boy) because he doesn't like the way he moves around at night (!!!) For me this was pants-shittingly scary, because of the offhand delivery.

What I didn't: The extended sequence in "The Further" was just a grab bag of allegedly scary images and had no real impact for me. There were random ghosts not seen/mentioned anywhere else in the film, and suddenly they have a complicated backstory. It seemed like filler. I appreciate the low tech approach, tho.
                      On repeat sightings, the Darth Maul demon loses impact- less would have been more here.
                      The aforementioned Jeepers Creepers moment really annoyed me- maybe because it seemed so out of place, but also because that film was so disappointing that I have residual annoyance for having paid to see it in a theater.