Reviews: Insidious, The Conspirator

Insidious
Starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye
Written by Leigh Whannell
Directed by James Wan

Story: A family moves into a new home, and are haunted by ghosts from a realm called The Further.

Review: Insidious is definitely creepy. It leaves you tense waiting for the next ghost around the corner to make its appearance. The director keeps a tight focus on the center, and had me looking in the corners of the frame to try to get a glimpse of what's off camera. The confrontation at the end with the big bad was a letdown, because it was so good building up to that point. I found the lesser ghosts to be much more interesting and creepy. For example, the one that is pacing on the outdoor balcony, and then shifts to pacing in the room sent shivers down my spine. Lastly, the score by Joseph Bishara was great. It gave the movie a unique quality, and was a nice throwback to classic horror movies.

Comparable Movies: Definitely Poltergeist. But I also got a little bit of a Sixth Sense type of vibe from it. There's no gore at all, and most of the scares are from not knowing what's around the next corner or inside the next door.

Rating: *** out of 5

The story was fairly unoriginal and no standout performances keep this from being a great ghost/horror movie. James Wan impressed me more with this than Saw. Hopefully his next is more like this than the latter.

The Conspirator
Starring James McAvoy, Robin Wright Penn, Tom Wilkinson, Evan Rachel Wood, Justin Long, Kevin Kline, Alexis Bledel, Danny Huston
Written by James D. Solomon
Directed by Robert Redford

Story: The military trial of Mary Surratt for the conspiracy to assassinate Abe Lincoln.

Review: To be honest I had no idea what this movie was about. I didn't know much about the assassination of Lincoln, or the making of this movie. I saw it was playing at my local theater and read a the plot description on Yahoo! It has a great cast (even more than what I listed above,) and Robert Redford is no slouch as a director. However, this movie doesn't live up to it's pedigree. It felt more like a History Channel documentary than an Oscar worthy movie. The performances were solid, the set design and costumes looked good, but I think the story just wasn't intriguing enough to make a movie out of it. I understand it's significance in history, but not everything needs to be made into a movie.

Comparable Movies: Any 17th, 18th, or 19th century trial movie. Amistad comes to mind, as well as the John Adams series on HBO. I'd recommend seeing John Adams before The Conspirator. Paul Giamatti is fantastic as John Adams.

Rating: ** 1/2 out of 5

It's worth seeing, but nothing to get excited over.

May the Force be with you,

CHUD