Insidious

James Wan and Leigh Whanell are the names responsible for the first SAW film which spawned a monster a seven year annual Halloween ride that twisted and turned and ate its own tail as disparate pieces came together to make a whole. Meanwhile Wan had gone in to make DEAD SILENCE and the Death Wish-lite DEATH SENTENCE which did not meet the same acclaim.

A young family struggle with moving house, a haunting, their sons mysterious coma like illness and another move to escape the ghosts that disturb the stay at home mom throughout the day and the teasing of the father by entities unknown through the night. As the hauntings continue even after the move the family seek help from a group of paranormal investigators and learn about the world that lies beyond our own.

INSIDIOUS comes at horror from the DRAG ME TO HELL angle, fun in tone with echos of DEAD SILENCE The sound is suped up to provide jarring orchestral stings and nerve shredding high pitched strings and most of the story is a quirky and fun take on demons, possession and astral projection. The first half of the movie is your standard Hollywood ghost story, a family in a new home, ghost figures walking the corridors or standing in corners and half heard voices. It is in the second half that the film takes a shift toward the weird and is all the better for it. Whannel and Shaye's arrival change the tone and offer the two best performances in the movie. A crazy seance and a journey into the dark and surreal other reality The Further are the freshest and most original parts of the film though ends up in a JEEPERS CREEPERS/NEW NIGHTMARE influenced demon lair. Wan films lot of his sequences from just behind his subject forcing the viewer into journeying along with the character and leaving us wondering what is lurking just out of frame but undoes this work with a jolting musical sting. The movie may scare and excite people first time through but on repeat viewings this will wear off leaving the watcher to decide if the off-kilter journey into The Further is for them or not.

Produced on $1.5 afforded to the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY producers after the success of their low budget feature INSIDIOUS is a creator controlled property that may not live up to its hype but is certainly more successful, certainly in box office takings having already accrued receipts of $30 million, than more expensive horror films that are bloating up theatres. The lesson here is keep it cheap and take a risk.

Half a hard on.

Scre4m

It's been eleven years since the last SCREAM sequel and it's been eleven years of rumours and speculation about a fourth instalment of the popular "post-modern slasher" that poked a little fun at the very genre it re-invigerated. And finally it's here; the return of the ghost faced killer, the creepy phone voice along with Sydney, Gale and Dewey and director Wes Craven even original screenwriter Kevin Williamson.

Coming back to where we first met her Sidney Prescott is facing the demons of her past by writing a book about her experiences and kicking off the book tour in her home town of Woodsboro. Much to her publicists delight another killing spree begins on the anniversary of the original killings and now Sherrif Dewey and his wife Gale Riley-Weathers are on hand to help solve the who-dunnit hopefully before a new generation of teens are dispatched to am early grave.

Sure the edge has gotten a little blunt but SCRE4M seems more like a replacement for SCREAM 3 than the start of a new trilogy following the story of the meta-franchise STAB by returning to Woodsboro and there are enough Willamson moments shining through to almost but not quite get the series back on track. The story juggles too many balls, it seems
too afraid to get near to any of the new characters in case it gives away its killer resulting in not giving them much to do with Hayden Panitterre being the most likable, engaging character. Dewey, Gale and Sidney suffer a bit too there's just not enough room in this format to fill us in on all their lives so we get quick snippets instead which leaves the feeling of being slightly cheated and looking for more. We also get a "kooky gadget", a theme that can be noticed in many of Cravens movies, the perfectly live streaming internet cameras that you could never get to work in addition to the Ghostface app that makes everyone's voice sound the same though we no longer have the incredible ability to copy anyone's voice a heinously silly misstep in SCREAM 3.

All the while the characters muse over horror cinema, they talk about SAW and they have a good bash at horror remakes, which ends up being a bit cheeky as the finale of SCRE4M really does set itself up to be a real life remake of the original, but the films too busy being about the business of being a SCREAM movie that it forgets to actually be scary or suspenseful despite drawing several allusions to Hitchcock films with characters named Marnie, Anthony Perkins and posters and mentions of Rear Window all over the place.

It seems that the fate of Dimension Films and its future productions lies in the hands of the stab happy series and maybe the executives got a little nervy about the quirky aspects of Williamson's script which is why there was widely reported re-writes from part 3 scripture Ehren Krueger and an out of court settlement with original producer Cathy Konrad and while the result is an acceptable entertainment for ninety or so minutes perhaps the overmanagement of the material has restricted the film from really achieving and ultimately diminished the possibility of restocking the Weinstein coffers.

Will we see S5REAM and 6CREAM? It seems money more than time will tell.

Half a hard on.