Insidious

Insidious is a dream movie, a movie producer's wet dream that is: the low-budget feature grossed close to US$100 million within three months of its April 2011 opening. It proves that there's always a big audience for a ghost movie focusing on haunted houses and a normal family undergoing paranormal attacks. This time the winning twist was a comatose boy.

The movie's marketing campaign had two strong selling points. First, it announced that it was produced by the team that made Paranormal Activity. Second, and more interestingly, its writer-director duo had appetising track records.

Australian Leigh Whannell (actor-writer) and Malaysian James Wan (director) palled up at film school in Oz, created a nine-minute short horror film that grew into a nine-year wonder, Saw. The pair left the franchise in other hands after Saw III, to make Dead Silence in 2007 (featuring an evil ventriloquist's dummy). In the same year, Wan established himself further in Hollywood, directing Kevin Bacon and John Goodman in Death Sentence.

For Insidious they dreamt up screenplay details that assured its success as a date movie. That genre demands frequent moments in which youngsters can do nothing but shiver, giggle nervously and clasp each other tightly. Ghoulish well-made-up and artfully-costumed "entities" suddenly appear in windows, macabre creatures flit past the cameras, screeching twangs of musical instruments pierce tense silences, actors' eyes roll, and malign spirits rush into the viewer's face and mind.

Such material is a popular art form, and the Aussie pair are now skilled artists. They can also attract more than competent acting talents: Patrick (Little Children) Wilson and Aussie Rose (TV's Damages) Byrne are the credibly loving parents of three young kids, one of whom suddenly falls into a coma. A grandmother (Barbara Hershey) introduces them to an old friend (splendidly convincing veteran Lin Shaye) who's a psychic working with a young pair of serio-comic high-tech ghost busters (one a low-profile role Whannell gave himself to act, well).

Judged by the critical standards of its genre, it's a top-rated possible start of a new franchise. Its opening credits are notable (a quick mind-bending sequence of visual tics) and its abrupt ending is cleverly shocking. Without employing gore, outre horrors or cheap tricks, Whannell and Wan made a little classic, managing to incorporate the genre's obligatory patches of wrily comic light relief.