Insidious (2010)

  So, like I said before, Christy is up visiting.  I asked her what she wanted to watch and she immediately said Insidious.  She'll lie and say I twisted her arm but really she volunteered.  Apparently, watching horror movies with me is more acceptable than watching them alone.  I got Rob to get it for us even though he steadfastly refused to participate.  He sat with his back to the TV, playing Star Wars:  The Old Republic, and ignoring everything that was going on behind him.  Personally, I would have had to turn around because I can't stand listening to a movie, especially a horror movie, without watching.  My imagination is so much worse than anything I'll see on screen. 

The movie itself was barely above dreck.  As the poster says, the same people made Paranormal Activity and Saw so they probably just keep a dartboard full of phrases like "haunted house", "haunted kid", "green lens filter" and just throw for points whenever they need a mortgage payment.  The only really good 'startle' moment in the film was apparently in one of the trailers, which I didn't see because I wasn't terribly interested in it.

Now, I talk a lot of shit about Christy and Rob not liking horror movies.  Words like "pansies" get thrown around and whatnot.  When I say the only good 'startle' moment, I mean the one that got me.  There is a moment in this film (and it's not a spoiler because it's in the freakin' trailer) where Barbara Hershey is telling some creepy story about how she spoke to the creature trying to possess her grandson.  There's an appropriate flashback with some shadowy thing standing in the corner pointing long-ass claws at the comatose kid and making a chittery noise.  It cuts back to Barbara, still talking, then cuts to Patrick Wilson and the demon face hovering behind him.  BOOM.  I was looking away, making some joke to Christy (cause that's how we deal with stuff) and caught that out of the corner of my eye.  I screamed like a little girl.  No joke.  I then burst into laughter, and found the remote to rewind and watch it again.  Other than that one part, there was nothing really disturbing.

A young family moves into a house and their oldest son is stricken with a mysterious coma.  The wife (Rose Byrne) starts seeing creepy shit and gets attacked by ghosts while the husband (Patrick Wilson) knows something's wrong but tries to rationalize it away.  Eventually, things get so bad that they move into another house but the creepy shit follows them there, too.  The mother-in-law (Barbara Hershey) suggests that they talk to an expert (Lin Shaye) who can exorcise the demons.

It felt very much like Paranormal Activity meets Poltergeist except with astral projection instead of Indian burial grounds.  There are more ghosts than you can shake a stick at but the only ones who are really anything to stay awake for are listed in the credits as Doll Face 1 and 2.  They'll stick with you.  (CLENCH!)  The actual demon loses about a million cool points since his theme song is "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" by Tiny Tim.

 I rest my case.

It gets the Liked It tag, not for being good but for giving me and my cousin so much comedic fodder.