What were the last movies you watched?

[topdrawer]

i watched The Woman in Black.

it was so, so, so boring.

[Mega-Tallica]

i watched The Woman in Black.

it was so, so, so boring.

I completely disagree, I thought it was one of the better horror movies of the past 3 years or so. It's more of the classic horror variety, it totally had a campfire ghost story vibe to it. It was odd seeing Daniel Radcliffe in a role that isn't Harry Potter, but that feeling left quickly. I thought it was pretty good.

Captain America: The First Avenger - 7.25/10
Knocked Up - 8.75/10
Ghostbusters - 7/10
Real Steel - 6.25/10
Wall Street - 9/10
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - 8.5/10
X-Men - 9/10
Safe House - 7.5/10
The Son Of No One - 2/10
Role Models - 9/10
Dinner For Schmucks - 8.75/10

[Gowienczyk]

I thought it was pretty good.

I agree.

[Lowlander2]

Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakuel

It's crap.

[Insane3]

That's all true, but 2001 barely had anything going on either way.

Well the pace is slower than in the usual Hollywood flick.

[Cipher_Peon]

Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakuel

It's crap.

I had to see one of the Chipmunk sequels when I was volunteering at the YMCA TWICE.
It was excruciating.

That's all true, but 2001 barely had anything going on either way.

2001 is a great movie. But it's also boring as hell. I appreciate it lots, but I'm not planning on watching it ever again.

[Insane3]

2001 is a great movie. But it's also boring as hell. I appreciate it lots, but I'm not planning on watching it ever again.

I watch it every morning to get my blood pumpin'.

[Cipher_Peon]

Do you watch paint dry too?

[soup567]

I love 2001.

Vertigo - 8/10

[Cipher_Peon]

So like Insidious.

There's going to be a lot of Poltergeist comparisons here, so if you want to cut the review, I'll just tell you to watch Poltergeist instead of Insidious. Again, if you've already watched Poltergeist.

What baffles me about Insidious is that they were trying really hard to deviate from modern horror movie tropes, and by doing so they pretty much copied Poltergeist (my personal favorite horror movie of all time) and then ruined it by accidentally adding modern horror movie tropes on its own. There were so many scenes that started up decent, only to have it completely crumble before me as something uninteresting pops out of the uncertainty that it brings to the table. The first baby monitor scene and the scene that convinces the female lead to leave the first house are both HUGE examples of this happening. They introduce a somewhat creepy (if a bit overused) scenario and then set it on fire when something pops in your face and then leaves you wondering why they had to ruin a perfectly good scene. The final encounter was COMPLETELY ruined due to this and the soundtrack (which was extraordinarily silly, out of place, and mood killing) and it didn't help that none of the demon designs were very interesting. The movie as a whole looks really awful with some hilariously awful special effects (voice special effects, visual slow motions, demon running around) that totally ruin any aspect of scariness that the movie could possibly achieve.

But what really makes me angry is that they totally ripped off Poltergeist on DOZENS of occassions, and yet never grasped what made Poltergeist so special. Insidious spent 55 minutes (I counted) to let the audience know that there were ghosts lurking about. This is disgusting and an insult to my intelligence, which is the Paranormal Activity problem. If I'm entering a horror movie about ghosts, then you don't need to build up and waste 55 minutes of my time to tell me what I already knew entering the movie. Poltergeist did this amazingly well, and let the audience know from the start that the people acknowledged and tried to live with their situation. All of the time it could have spent wasting the audience's time by asking "What's going on?!? It might be a ghost!", it spent on heavy characterization, incredible pacing, and actual fun. The cast of Insidious had a permanent scowl on their faces, and it seemed so misery inducing, rather than scary fun. I can understand if a horror movie wants to be taken seriously, but with special effects that cheesy, I can't take it straight faced.

Anyway, Poltergeist began creepy and escalated to total horror goodness by the end, and it does this by having the setting having something slightly off about it. Things were strange and you never knew /what/ exactly would come out to scare you next, so it kept you on your toes as you enjoyed the ride. Insidious never comes off as creepy until about 4/5 of the movie, and only during the first half of the other world. The other world itself as a whole just felt like the house at night, the lack of something strangely off about it ruined the intensity of the scene. However, the inhabitants of the otherworld were extremely creepy and well done, but only during the first half of the climax where their movements were unhumanlike and beyond disturbing. However by the end, they just act like zombies and it gets boring fast.

There's 2 more things I want to mention (there's no way in hell that I'm going to list every "borrowed" similarity from Poltergeist. My Twitterfeed mentions most of it) about Insidious before I'm done venting. The movie lacks any sort of subtlety. Everything about the movie is in your face and explosive (combined with the cheesy effects, it all goes wrong) and absolutely NOTHING is left to the audience's imagination. Everything is spelled out for you, nothing creepy is shown in the background, and every camera shot pretty much zooms in and focuses on what's going to happen next. There is NOTHING at all happening in the background, which is really saddening. I remember watching Ju-on The Grudge and seeing the ghost's face in the reflection of a door. But the thing is that there was NOTHING on the screen to point out and say "Hey look here! The ghost is right here! We don't want you to miss a single thing, because we're afraid you might want to watch this movie more than once!" The reflection creeped me out so bad, I rewinded the movie to make sure it wasn't my imagination playing tricks on me. It was so creepy, so subtle, and so barely there that it led to an amazing experience. Insidious has none of this. It's so afraid of the audience not noticing it's extremely unengaging scares that it shoves it in their faces, only to let them notice the poor execution.

Lastly, the movie's plot twist was stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
NOBODY who watched the movie could have been surprised by it. NOBODY.
I wasn't paying full attention to the movie and yet I saw the twist coming from lightyears away and prayed that they wouldn't resort to such a blatantly obvious "shock".

Insidious is a frustrating movie to write about. It realizes that modern horror movies tend to be less good than others, but in the rush to avoid becoming one of them, it just became a classic horror movie that drowned itself in the blood of its brethren. Which is metaphorical, because there's like only a handprint of blood in this movie. I don't get off on blood and gore, but they DO have a place in horror movies. They can be used to such effectiveness, but NOPE! The movie goes out of its way to clean up after itself. Oh well. That's what I get for watching a rated PG-13 horror movie. What was Poltergeist rated again?