‘Insidious’ is a supernatural horror film that was released in the UK earlier this year. It was written by Leigh Whannell the mastermind behind the Saw franchise and it was directed by James Wan, the director of Saw. The main plot of the movie is the possession of a young child which causes evil, disturbing events in the house.
The trailer starts with the title of the film in a science digital looking font, ‘INSIDIOUS’ then ‘IS’ ‘INSIDIOUS’ this is a clever strategy as it gets the audience thinking. There is a cut to a man sitting in a chair looking very scared and uncomfortable. To add to his discomfort, an unseen voice asks ‘Are you ready?’ of which he answers a feeble ‘yeah’. The inquisitive voice almost sounded like it was talking to the audience as well, preparing us for what is to come.
As the audience, we are aware that something must be wrong as the man’s chest heaves as he breathes heavily. We see a hand start a timer and the way it ticks mirrors the heartbeat of the unidentified man in the chair. Informative text comes up on screen that informs us that the film was made by the makers of ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Saw’ thus telling us that this is going to be a similar type of film if not better. When there is a cut back to the film scene, we see that the man has his eyes closed and as the camera zooms into his face the audience prepares for the worse. As the man closes his eyes we wait for an insight into previous or possibly future events. There is a sharp cut to an establishing shot of a house that looks grey and glum thus affirming our prediction of bad things to come. We then get into smooth cuts of the man, a woman (who’s his partner) and two children who seem like a happy enough family but we know that this is not the case for long.
