Insidious (2011)

Nothing creepier than an evil looking kid.

Director: James Wan
Writer: Leigh Whanell

The Story:  A family discovers that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son has inexplicably fallen into a coma.   

The Good: The cast does a great job in this movie. 

As if one haunted house wasn't bad enough. 

 Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson are not only very believable they also make smart choices.  One of the things I really liked about this movie, was that the characters avoided making many of the stereotypical stupid horror movie mistakes. 
To me, the characters that stole the movie were Specs and Tucker. 

Leigh Whannell as, you guessed it "Specs"

Angus Sampson as Tucker

Specs and Tucker are paranormal investigators who get called in to see if the house is truly haunted.  They show using ghostbusting equipment that looks half steam-punk, half MacGyver.  These two low rent ghostbusters are very engaging and I would really like to see a whole movie just about them. 

The Bad: While the characters avoid many horror cliches, the movie does not.  A lot of the scares are simply loud musical cues, and the old black cat scare.  The must have had a very low budget on this because some of the scenes are nothing but black backgrounds and fog. 
When they decide to conduct a seance, things with the psychic take a turn into bat-shit weird that I can't even explain properly.  You'll just have to see it to believe it.

The Ugly: By now everyone has probably seen this scene on the trailer:

It's not polite to point.

The monster here looks very creepy and intimidating.  They really should have kept him in the shadows.  At first the creature is only glimpsed in shadows or psychic drawings.  He's very scary looking in all of those.  Once they finally reveal him, not so much.  Imagine a creature that has  Darth Maul's head on a shirtless male model body, wearing goatskin leggings and there you go. 

The Verdict: This is not a terrible movie, but it doesn't really break any new ground.  It's worth watching, but not something I would see twice.  I would like to see a sequel that focuses on Specs and Tucker's next job though.