Insidious vs. The Conjuring

Turn out the lights, get under a cover, grab your crucifixes and get ready for horror movie season, because this year, as far as masters in horror for this generation go, it takes Wan to know one.

 Today I take Wan's two latest households of haunted-house horror, The Conjuring and the Insidious franchise, both featuring sheer terror, demons and the ability to keep you sleeping with the lights on, and will compare them, contrast them and examine not only what it is that makes these films so terrifying but what has compelled me enough to rant about what makes James Wan a master of his craft.

   But before we can conjure up where Wan stands today, it is only fitting to take us back to the beginning of his first breakout horror flick and one of the most influential horror films of the last decade, this generation and of all time in the sense that it was a remarkable game changer.

  Of course the film I'm referring to is Saw, a movie that literally everyone with or without any horror movie knowledge knows. It burst open the doors for torture porn and unleashed gore hounds to a filterless generation where we've hit the point where quite literally anything goes. It not only spawned six sequels, each more gory and more insanely stupid than the last but it paved the roads with blood for directors like Eli Roth to fearlessly release his Hostel trilogy which has been known to up the bloody stakes even more so than any Saw sequel.
   As influential as that first low-budget, simply twisted horror flick was in 2004, it unfortunately gave gore a new name that I personally don't dig too deep. I can handle blood and gore if it's with purpose. Whether it's Wan trying to prove a bloody point or Sam Raimi trying to be so over the top in high B movie fashion he wants you to laugh, I can get on board with blood for good reason. But Saw III pushed its gore to new, unnecessary levels that my stomach had a hard time with. From there the unnecessary gore in the remaining sequels lost me completely. It's sick in a way that we live in a generation of people who will throw down full admission on opening day to see these gore-fests whether they be good or God awful because they're addicted to torture porn.

   But backtracking, now... Most people have a clouded memory or high judgment of that first Saw film due to the reputation of its progressively ridiculous sequels giving it a bad rap, but honestly? Take that first movie. Strip away all the sequels and all the gory flicks it inspired. Examine it again as a work of pure craft. Now let's call a spade a spade, shall we? Is Saw really a phenomenal film? Not really. Is it in leagues with the unholy trinity of the 70's (Rosemary's Baby, The Omen and The Exorcist)? Critics would shake their furious fists at the idea of such a preposterous argument. But for this generation? It works. And it doesn't just work because we're settling for post-Scream horror that's more than subpar. The first Saw believe it or not has more tricks up its sleeve than just being a cleverly twisted serial killer picture with bloody brilliant twists along the way. There are few and far moments in between, but there are in fact moments of well-masked tension; slow-building fear; pure horror.

These moments would not only foreshadow the berserk, unpredictable atmosphere of the zany Insidious "further" universe...

...but would also become great textbook examples of how to keep your audience literally on the edge of their seat as seen over and over again in The Conjuring.

  Take the scene where Adam enters his broken-in apartment just before he's captured by Jigsaw, for example. Call me out if you want but that scene is one of the most well crafted scenes in a horror movie. Period.
  We start by examining that Adam is in trouble. He enters his apartment to which the front door seems to have been opened and flickering the light switch becomes predictably useless when it comes to turning on any lights in the room. Fumbling around in the dark, Adam hears a noise; a shuffling. Someone else is inside that apartment. Now our pulse begins to rise. Naturally, as a photographer, Adam goes to use the flash on his camera not only to illuminate the room but perhaps catch physical evidence of someone breaking and entering. Now, what makes the use of Adam's camera absolutely terrifying is not only the fact that we only catch glimpses of whatever's inside in a brief, subliminal second of a blinding flash but it's the buildup to the flash having to recharge. The pure sound of the rising pitch of the whistle of the flash just before each photograph is taken is perhaps more chilling than whatever it is that hides in the shadows of the corners of the apartment. For with each sound and each flash, our pulse raises more and more as we know that, as great horror movies show time and time again, something not so glorious is going to pop out and scare the ever living sh*t out of us.

And it usually works.

And so, with a big gulp, a grip on our seats, knees or hoodies we keep so close to our eyes as if they shall protect us from any harm, we watch poor Adam stumble in literal darkness as the seemingly never-ending moment of quick flashes ultimately results in, you guessed it, something awful popping out and scaring the ever living sh*t out of us.

   It is that scene alone that proves Wan knows horror; he knows how to make anyone sweat and creep over their shoulder as they walk down a dark hallway, cautiously flicking on as many light switches in their houses at night, as humanly possible.

  Because we all know that whatever killers, monsters or demons are hiding in the shadows 

are impervious to the light.

  Fast forward through all the gore to 2010 and we have the infamous Insidious, an unexpected breakout horror film from the Wan man who knows how to bring horror back to the people. It was a spooky little gem that fans were outrageously claiming "the most terrifying film since The Exorcist!"

Yeah, Okay.

  And perhaps it was because of all that hype that I felt letdown that I didn't find Insidious to be as scary as The Exorcist (nothing I've seen is scarier than The Exorcist IMO) but I will say, for a nice little PG-13 bloodless haunted house thriller of a film based on craft and wild CGI demons, it was damn spooky. With Poltergeist being the clear inspiration, Wan knows how to take the element of asking the questions "what's inside the house?" "what is it that's haunting these people?" And by hiding his creatures for a certain amount of time, banking purely on build up, suspense and small inklings of a horrific ghastly face, Insidious gets you in shivers from its opening scene. In fact, it keeps you on edge so much that by the time the film's climax swings into the full-on Further, you can almost sigh with relief that the tension is mostly gone and you can rest easy with nothing but pure pop-ups and demonic faces back to back to back. I can see why those of faint heart had a hard time with this flick. If you're not familiar with the genre and scare quite easily the film is bound to keep you up at night. As for me, I will say that though it eventually didn't keep my lights on and bathroom mirrors avoided for too long, it had indeed been the scariest film I had seen in the last decade. In the end, it's a fun haunted house movie that sort of gets off track in the last act by throwing us literally into the demonic realm of the life between sleep and death but by brilliantly tearing pages from Wes Craven's playbook, Wan makes the idea of going to sleep a fear for his characters and ultimately his audience. It's a tight, taught thriller; a fun ride filled with little tricks along the way that eventually tries to get you to poop your pants. With a clever twist ending revealing one final scare, as most horror movies tend to do, it seemingly ends open-ended and yet, also not unlike most horror movies, it doesn't really have you expecting more.

  That is until Wan quite literally unleashed Insidious: Chapter 2 only one month after his latest horror-directed spectacle. I won't go into full-fledge review mode for the sequel but needless to say, the movie is essentially more of the same. While the overall mood and atmosphere stays in "horror mode" without much room for build-up or tension (which will have you sweating for 90 minutes), the revealed scares just ultimately aren't as scary. While yes, the tension is there (with a creepy recurring piano playing by itself); moments of ghoulish faces and old ladies' backs turned before they reveal their horrific screams that are bound to make you jump in your seat, the film is often much funnier than the first, more so intentionally with comic-relieved jokes but also with some unintentional laughs. Let's just say someone gets knocked the f**k out by a ghost on more than one occasion.

  I won't lie and say the film's not clever. It may have been an unnecessary sequel but in the second act it uses footage and moments lifted directly from the first flick that incorporate "holy sh*t" moments that will have you marveling at the wits behind showing that the Further is not bound by time. I'm sure Wan didn't plot out the first movie's events ever so specifically that he was saving certain explanations for a sequel but seeing as he is a man of many twists and turns, it shouldn't come as any surprise. And with Patrick Wilson attempting to give a portrayal similar to that of Jack Nicholson in The Shining he is both brilliant at times and oddly questionable in most others. Whether that's due to his acting still in need of work or whether it's Wan who's still figuring out how to conjure great performances up from his actors, the movie is not flawless. But like the case with most sequels, if you love the first, might as well check out the second.

The film got an R rating for just being too damn scary... If that doesn't get you interested, you're drunk.

  We now move on to one my most talked about films of the year, this previous Summer's The Conjuring. Now, those who hate horror or those who are honestly just curious as to what can be so good about a simple retelling of a haunted house movie that's been done a hundred times already, stay seated. Because that's just it. Wan doesn't necessarily try and give his audience a new story... at all. Essentially what works so brilliantly about this unexpected little ghost story is that it takes pieces of craft influenced from so many different horror movies that Wan completely and utterly plays off the audience's expectations and builds his anticipation flawlessly. Instead of upping the sound effects with the jolt of a scary undead face popping up on screen (though that does happen once or twice), Wan focuses on the dread; the slow building moments of quiet, creepy creaking throughout the house and he plays us for long periods of time. Much like he did for Insidious, Wan stretches the suspense as far as it will take its audience. He drives moments of utter terror long enough that we await what exactly it is that's hiding in the dark basement or what lurks behind that bedroom door to the point where we're hiding in our hoods, biting our nails, gripping our chair arms and saying the Lord's prayer.

  Granted, Wan does give into showing us his demons (literally) which while scary, ultimately takes away from our imagination and Wan never totally loses our imagination but instead hides just enough to get our brains stewing with some absolutely terrifying mental imagery because Wan clearly understands the scary truth; That nothing is more horrifying than the monsters we create in our head.

 I can't emphasize enough how much of a work of craft the film is. While yes, some CGI demons and hair pulling here and there, the film is mostly based on the craft of actual film! (for real!) Fans of film will shutter with pure ecstatic glee as Wan's DP tracks his camera in and out of hallways, pans throughout the house following the five happy little girls soon to be terrorized by shadows on the wall; We film majors will do nothing but smile at the use of Wan not only guiding the camera in ways that will have our heads literally shifting to see what's out of frame but uses his directorial vision to help us peer over the shoulders (sometimes literally) of characters experiencing the terror as these spooky occurrences happen, rather than revealing too much to the audience beforehand while the protagonists know not what's about to happen to them. These are just some of the methods Wan brilliantly uses to keep casual horror fans and some obnoxious moviegoers from yelling at the screen or making audible predictions as if the characters can hear them through some eerie Poltergeist-esque magic.

Because sometimes we just need to yell at their stupidity.

  Which brings me to another huge sigh of relief Wan pulls from under the rug. Where the majority of characters in horror films usually make unrealistically stupid decisions that ultimately lead to their being terrorized and often their demise, here the characters shockingly don't make many unconsciously bad decisions (and we're dealing with a family of five little girls here... Lots of room for poor choices) which is an incredible surprise seeing as the actors actually pull off some more than decent performances. Granted, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson light up the screen as the demon-seeing ghost hunters, the family led by our own leading Monday-Man Ron Livingston actually show off some believable acting chops as well making this one of the more believable horror flicks in recent memory; an even spookier fact once you remember that it's based on a true story.

   Now, if you've seen Insidious you will definitely see the parallels between the two films: Patrick Wilson, a haunted house, a team of goofy ghost hunters performing their own wacky paranormal activity and horrifying ghastly faces that stalk families with kids. And ultimately though Wan clearly uses the same haunted house influence for both movies, they are in ways totally different. Insidious is a modern day smaller look at a small family being haunted by a giant demonic realm. The Conjuring is a  nearly 40-year-old story about a pair of real-life demon chasers who took a big case with a big family being stalked by literal demons from a world we can only imagine. Insidious makes you jump and makes your pulse pound with a zany, bizarre demonic world of the unknown. The Conjuring sits with you; stays with you; makes you think twice when getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom; creates tension that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
  As similar as the two are in so much atmosphere, the tone is actually totally different and honestly, both give their respective audiences something worthwhile. I can see why Wan chose to go with Insidious first; the modern-day horror approach for today's audiences who just wanna scream (we are currently in a generation that takes found footage films and haunted house flicks that thrill people enough to tell all their friends "GO SEE THIS MOVIE RIGHT NOW, IT WAS THE F*CKING SCARIEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!")

But it was a smart move to hold out for The Conjuring; a throwback to the days of 70's filmmaking in horror; a movie that shows just enough craft to prove that the days of the unholy trinity of horror movies are not dead but are having new life breathed into them and while you can clearly which side I'm on today, I respect Wan for his work and it's a shame he claims he's bowing out of the genre but I hope that his influence will give birth to a whole new generation of horror movies.

Wan's Greatest Moments (Spoiler Alerts):

• Creepiest Moment - The Conjuring: 

          -The kid waking up and seeing a demon in her room that nobody else can see.

• Best cinematography - The Conjuring:

-The swooping, singular shot following the family moving into the new house as they go in and outside, played to The Zombies' "Time of the Season." It's all one long horrifically brilliant take.


• Best Pulse Pounder - Insidious:

-Patrick Wilson waking up to the alarm going off, checking the locked front door, leaves the room for a second, comes back, front door is WIDE OPEN!


• Biggest WTF moment - Insidious: Chapter Two: 

-When you realize it was actually Patrick Wilson who opened the front door.


• Funniest & Most Startling Moment - Insidious: Chapter Two:

          -"Don't you dare!" *ghost punch*

• Best Overall Moment - The Conjuring:

         -The entire "hide and clap" sequence when the mother wakes up in the middle of the night.



Winner: The Conjuring (are you honestly surprised?)

May the Lord be with you... You'll need it.