Okee dokee, well since it’s been forever and a day since I (Robin) have actually written anything for this blog..  I figured I would do all the Drunk in a Graveyard readers a pretty nice solid and inform you as to why.  Recently, I accepted a position as Supernatural Honey for the {redacted}, and that has meant learning how to use twitter properly (of which you can tweet me @elfmagick), and it has also meant learning to review in “blurb” form.  I realize that not everyone on the face of the earth wants to read my long winded diatribes and poorly captioned pieces, so I dumb it all down into an easily digestible format for me work with the{redacted}.  That certainly does not mean I will stop ranting like a mentally ill person outside the drug store, only that I took something of a break.  However, in my absence, my better half Scotty Floronic ( @drunkgraveyard) on twitter for you twit worms), has been keeping this place lively with his own fun rantings, and since he is far more knowledgeable than I about the ins and outs of horror, I recommend you keep up with his work.

Recently I did a live tweet and then further a review of the movie Insidious, but both were quite tame in comparison to the notes I was taking, and looking back I really felt this was too good an opportunity to pass up.  Also recently I found out that some little fuckwit mouth breather copied my Paranormal Activity 4 review from the Horror Honeys for his shitty ass blog..  which is actually depressing, because if you think about it, wouldn’t you want to copy someone you know..  that is good at what they do?  Not, say, a 27 year old woman who regularly drinks $10 wine and collects plastic horses..  like..  that’s just sort of tragic.  But I guess if you can’t beat em..  copy their shit and claim it as your own?  Anyways I was actually pretty choked about it all because I take my writing pretty seriously (no I Don’t), and I use this and the Horror Honeys as a good strong therapeutic outlet for my insurmountable rages and nothing really takes the edge off like ripping a horrible movie to shit.

So without further fucking around, I present to you my take on Insidious:

Okay.  So I first heard of this flick through my friend group at a party, and Jesus absolute Christ, the way they brayed on and on about the fucking thing you’d have thought Satan himself had appeared and ass fucked a kitten..  According to them it was the scariest movie of all time (my friends are apparently pansies), and Lord, I thought this was going to be this generation’s Exorcist or something.

Due to some unforseen circumstances (being that I hate the movie theatre due to working there for several Twilight and Harry Potter openings), I didn’t catch this flick in the theatre, so when I found it for $4.99 in the FutureShop discount bin, I thought I had made a pretty good score.  I sat down to watch it, booze in hand and honestly I really should have figured by the taglines about Saw and Paranormal Activity…  for the record, those aren’t good movies..  So what the fuck was I thinking?  Did I just black out at FutureShop?  Fuck maybe I have PTSD from all that LSD I took a few years back.

Anyways..  okay, so the movie opens up or whatever and there’s this young family, with the dad being played by Patrick Wilson for some reason, and let me just say he’s playing a poor man’s Bill Paxton for this one..  which is alright because he’s coupled with Rose Byrne and she’s playing to a poor man’s Natalie Portman.. which is kinda alright until you think about the fact that both of these actors are kind of low-rent..  imitating other decidedly low-rent actors..

I don’t really know what else Patrick Wilson has been in, but he was recently in an episode of girls playing naked ping pong with Lena Dunham, so the whole time I watched Insidious FYI I was picturing Lena Dunham’s breasts, which at least made for some entertaining moments I guess?

Anyways this young family has a son, and a baby, and they just moved into a new house, and the Mom is kinda channeling this whole Vanessa Carlton piano singer songwriter thing except she totally sucks and her husband is all, “oh yeah” about it and kind of refuses to listen to her poorly written tunes, which is pretty fair because after the first time you hear White Houses, the gimmick is kind of lost.

Anyways poor man’s Natalie kind of gets left home with the kids, which really kinda harshes on her dream of being Jewel and Patrick Wilson is presumably out working/drink/playing naked ping pong with voluptuous actresses, which could you blame the guy?  There’s only so much Natalie Imbruglia/Sarah Mclachlan that one can take on any given day and this bitch has exceeded her quota in spades.

We find out that there is a dark force lurking around the family home that seems to be inherently drawn to the son (the one who isn’t a baby) and quelle surprise!  Ghosts and kids?  Ghosts stick to kids like shit on velcro, so that’s not really a big shocker.  I’ve always kinda wondered what it is about kids and the supernatural you know?  Is it because kids are so gross?  corruption of the innocent or what?  Something isn’t stirring the kool-aid here, and it reeks of how that one time the Exorcist was scary because it had a little girl in it and from then on it’s been kids and ghost for the win according to film makers.  That said though, most adult possession movies are boring as fuck, so if you find something that works might as well stick with it until the dolla dolla bills stop flowing in.

Anyways the kid falls down and smacks his little head on the ground, as children are want to do, and goes into a coma or some shit, and his parents are obviously pretty perturbed about the whole thing.  Some scenes that involve Patrick Wilson in his ginch running around the house ensue and a creepy tall man figure is kinda lurking around..

Also Patrick Wilson’s character is a teacher or a professor, in which case I would immediately fail his course because I’d be too busy looking at DAT ASS.  He also has this habit of kinda tripping out in his office, to which I said, maybe he should stop smoking fatties in the parking lot before work.  I mean I know teaching is terrible, but maybe limit yourself to a joint before and then a joint after?  it’s a pro-tip.

Anyways, the poor man’s Natalie is all busted up about the paranormal happenings in the house really fucking with her folk singer Mumford and Sons dreams, so she starts the bitch machine going to her disinterested husband who just sort of gawks at her like she’s crazy, which was probably unintentional..  He was probably just thinking about Lena Dunham’s breasts bouncing during a rousing ping pong match.  I can totally tell when I am braying about something ridiculous to Scotty Floronic, the exact moment when his brain turns off any input regarding what I am saying and starts thinking about porn…  Must be a  guy thing.

Anyways, he clearly doesn’t believe his poor wife’s addled rantings, until one night when she freaks out and sees a guy that looks kind of like a cross between Dani Filth and Johnny Depp all creepin in the shadows and she does what any rational person would do and starts ka-kawing like a maniac.  I mean if I saw Dani Filth in my kitchen when I went for a snack I’d probably be a little troubled but I wouldn’t shriek like a harpy about it.

Also for the record, I fucking hate Cradle of Filth..  if you listen to them in any seriousness, you may need to have your head examined.  That said I’ve always wanted to attend one of their shows..  the ticket cost would be negligible in comparison to the amount of illict drugs and hard alcohol I would consume prior..  Regardless I think it would be an experience, so if anyone wants to take me, and has a few rails and a sicty pounder to spare, I’m totally game.  I’ll bring the bondage gear strap on penis if you bring the blow.  Actually I’m pretty sure all the goths would sense me as an outsider..  the blonde hair and unicorn tattoos would be a dead giveaway, and the last you would see of me, I would be being bopped over the noggin by a lady of the night’s coffin shaped purse.  Oh, goths.  Making fun of you never gets old.  EVER.

Anyways, to make a bad situation worse, Patrick Wilson phones his mom and is all, hey come on over, because why not add in-laws to this paranormal activity that is happening at the house, really have the whole mixed bag of stress.. why the fuck not.  So mom rolls up and let’s just say, she’s a fuckin’ old silver fox, like real pretty and she only really seeks to make poor man’s Natalie look even worse..  also for some reason she has a little conversation with the supernatural force present in the house?  What she gleans from it’s clicking and subtle hand motions is that it wants to possess/own the comatose young son (who might I add is now laying in a hospital bed being fed intravenously).

The mom informs Wingus and Dingus that they should seek outside help in dealing with their haunting, and they turn around and hire Mumford and Sons to come and investigate.

..And since Mumford and Sons should stick to writing sick melodies that hipsters can drink microbrewed beer to, they fail miserably and have to call in the only actor who manages to even slightly redeem this fucking abortion of film..  Lin Shaye.  You might remember her from Kingpin:

Turns out, she’s a psychic and actually pretty bad ass as far as psychics go..  she’s not some diabetic manatee like Sylvia Browne rollin’ out on Ricki Lake to entertain tranquilized housewives..  she is conjuring some next level SHIT.

Anyways, it’s with her smarts that she deduces that the son, Dalton, is an astral projector (projectionist), who astrally travels in his sleep to other places, and through this ability and with his untimely coma, his spirit is actually left in a place called the Inbetween, and he is essentially an open vessel to which demons and hellspawn are drawn because they are looking for a place to rest their weary claws and hoofed feet.

See, this whole fucking thing sounds so fucking legit right?  Astral projection ghost monster stuff?  FUCK.  It sounds so scary, and sets this whole movie up for a great premise..  This is all very new, never been done, and has so much potential..  and then it all just fails fucking miserably..  and I think that’s why I’m so bent out of shape about it.

Ugh anyways, so for whatever reason, Patrick Wilson tells Lin Shaye to GTFO, but pretty well immediately calls her back, because though he might be the mack daddy when it comes to naked ping pong, he doesn’t know shit about fuck when it comes to hauntings and ghosts and astral projection.

Of course she comes back, with Mumford and Sons in tow and they set about creating one of the most elaborate seances I’ve ever seen.  All sorts of fancy gadgets and camera, and a pretty legit ectoplasm mask for Lin.

They try to contact Dalton in the spirit realm, only to have things go obviously sideways, as seances tend to do..  I mean really..  do you ever have a seance and expect things to go well?  Like you and whoever you reach in the great beyond just sit and have a little chin wag about the state of the world, worm to decomposition ratio, who looked fat at their wake?  I mean come on now, let’s be reasonable here.

Anyways shit goes all fucky and apparently the only way for Dalton to be saved and return to his body is for Patrick Wilson (who can also astral project) to journey to the inbetween to get him back.

We learn through the silver fox mother in law that buddy Patrick was haunted by a ghost from a young age, a woman in black who would only appear in photos of him, and as she got closer and closer to him, his mother called Lin Shaye, and eventually stopped taking pictures.

Anywho, Patrick Wilson takes the ol plunge into the otherworld, because hey how else is he gonna get his son back?  then shit really starts to go fucky.

A whole bunch of ghosts appear and he’s roaming around through what appears to be the finest Universal Studios set money could buy, and he of course finds his son’s soul in the care of a demon that looks Darth Maul and Nightcrawler’s abortion.

Honestly, this was just too much.  That thing looks like shit.  My cat has taken scarier looking shits, and one time she ate a bug and puked it up and it was more gross than that red skinned asshole.  Honestly, I felt the ghosts in Insidious were pretty creepy looking but this pushed “creepy” into “cartoony” and the whole thing just went out the window.

Anyways..  Like I was saying..  who is this movie meant to frighten?  Small children?  Hardcore religious fundamentalists?  Republicans?  The only people that would seek to scare are the people who have to steer clear of the neighborhood comic shop because Marvel comics keep them up at night.

Anyways, Patrick Wilson has to fight his way back and blah blah blah and yay he’s rejoined with his family…  or is he?

For whatever reason his wife decides to snap a photo of him and there appears the scary woman in black..  and fade out with just enough of a hook left for a sequel that is due out this October.

Since I’m such a nice person and shit I will actually go see the sequel in theatres and likely review it for you guys, if only because any reason to sneak bottles of wine into the theatre is good enough reason for me.

Honestly, I really felt this movie had a lot of potential and like a rich kid at college, squandered most of it foolishly.  The ghosts were okay, but most of the scares were half assed.  The actors were poor choices (aside from Lin Shaye..  who is majestic), and everything felt really thrown together like previously mentioned rich kid’s midterm papers.  Everything was really forced and didn’t seek to make much of a believer out of me, in either the story or the scares..  and then along comes Darth Maul..  like yes okay I know..  the DEVIL…  wow..  terrifying..  but the red skin, forked tail and the whole bit, it was just too much.  It was goofy as fuck.

I really hope the makers of Insidious shape up for the sequel, but I’m sure that’s asking far too much.  You know if you watch the special features on the DVD it shows you all about the creepy ghosts and making of, and you can just totally tell the people involved enjoy the smell of their own farts immensely.  Also, you can totally tell they are snobs..  they were all like whooaaa man let’s call our movie Insidious (they then promptly lose all credibility when they use the name of the film in the film), and it really is such an appealing and sinister word..  but then the movie sucked and the joke was on them.

What a fucking wank.

DRUNK IN A GRAVEYARD RATING:  drink until you astral project yourself away from this movie!