Insidious

"the first half the film jabs you in the face with the freakishness of the house and the child yet as it moved onto the second half it lacked a knock-out punch"

 I'm back from a working weekend, with another on the horizon I've been struggling to both watch films and upload reviews. I've been a bit fixated on The Killing series one after watching the first four episodes in one afternoon, should upload a review?

Anyway, new dvd release Insidious is meant to be the main attraction here and it's definitely worth letting it give you a scare. Insidious is basically a hunted house horror film with a twist, the twist being that its in fact the child that is hunted. In the first half the film jabs you in the face with the freakishness of the house and the child yet as it moved onto the second half it lacked a knock-out punch and left me wanting them to re-do certain parts.

In my opinion the horror genre is the most difficult to get right and so many have fallen short, I recommend Last House on the Left, The Silent House and Creep. Insidious is a very attempt and I can see why many people have expressed how much they liked it to me although the critics had a mixed opinion. I most enjoyed such highlights as the possibility the child was going to go on a crazy hunted rampage and felt let down when this did not happen.

Point of interest - Tiny Tim and the song Tip Toe through the Tulips - This song is heard a lot in the film and is probably one of the spookiest things in the film.

Scream 4

A horror franchise getting a sequel, yes yes we've been here before. Saw has been dominating the Halloween cinema box office for the past few years, how many squeals are we up to with that again? - 7 right? I must admit a certain likeness for the Scream series and the fact that this sequel comes a decade after the last gives it some validity unlike the mere 12 month gap for other horror sequel's.

I might have been me but the plot caught me off guard, by the end of it I think I had just managed to get my head around the "stabathon" films concept. My defence is that most of the horror sequels allow the viewer to take a short nap between scenes and still feel totally capable of writing a review.

The Scream series can be cited as the father of slasher films and should be admired. However does a fourth film add anything to the series? not really, yet its not altogether pointless, at least it gives the cast the chance to make up to date references (the video blogs being a cornerstone of the plot)

Someone should have told Wes Craven to put the three original films in a pretty new dvd boxset to up his cash fund instead, just because a decade has gone by does not mean classics should be wheeled out of retirement.