On Thursday I went to the Red Door Double Feature of Insidious and Insidious Chapter 2. I have to say, it was a cool experience and I haven’t had such a blast watching a couple of horror movies. The Conjuring was, if I can sound Boston for a second, a wicked time, but the Insidious films contain just the kind of old school chills that make them so much fun and scary at the same time. Viewing the two films back to back is recommended.
There were two reasons why I jumped at the chance to go to the red door event. First, it was a double feature, which doesn’t happen too often in first run theaters and multiplexes, and secondly, I wanted to see if the movies tie together cohesively. I can honestly tell you that they fit together so well and Chapter 2 even maintains the cliffhanger from the end of the first one for the first several minutes of the movie, which suspends the suspense for even longer. My eyes were glued to the screen waiting to see how it resolved.
The imagery in the Insidious films is so damn insanely incredible. There were 10 eyes in that sentence, I mean i’s. It would look creepier if it was eyes though. And I don’t think I’ve ever written a sentence with ten i’s until this very day. Glad you could share the moment with me. But yeah, the use of the color red as a theme in both films is not only presented in an artistic way by making the color almost become a character of its own, but also adds an elegant quality to a genre film in what’s typically a realm of often cheaply made films featuring the bulk of the budget going into designing convincing death scenes. The ghostly makeup, lighting, and the set design were all superb and helped create an eerie atmosphere that spans both films.
So far the Insidious franchise has single handedly dictated where the next movement in horror should go. Even though many of us have been yearning for a film exactly like Insidious for years, because not everyone wants to see cheesy death scenes with eyeballs popping out of peoples heads, OK, well, that was a bad example, we all want to see that. All I’m saying is that it’s been a long ass time since I went to the theater and had this much fun watching a horror film. As I mentioned, The Conjuring, was a blast too, but in a different way. Not to spoil anything if you haven’t saw it, but it ultimately becomes an exorcism film, while Insidious is just full of plain old fashioned hauntings and outer body experiences featuring demons, creeps, and ghosts.