What makes insidious so scary

The resulting scene is eerier than it is scary, but this scene still packs a powerful punch. While this scene might not be viscerally disturbing like a lot of the frightening scenes to follow, the pure anguish of watching a parent realizing that there's no hope for their comatose son is unparalleled in the film. This scene definitely owes quite a bit to The Exorcist , being reminiscent of the scene where Regan's mother realizes that neither medical doctors nor psychiatrists have a single clue as to what's afflicting her daughter.

This film does rely on exploiting the fears that come with parenthood, which is something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. One of the scenes that highlight this is when there are multiple frightening happenings one after another. Shortly thereafter, Dalton's mother notices a bloody handprint on his sheets and an apparition crouched in the corner of his room. She almost immediately realizes the "thing" in Dalton's room probably isn't human, showing us exactly what kind of supernatural thrills we're in for.

Anyone familiar with stories of real-life hauntings knows that if you can't handle it anymore, you pack up and you move out of the house with the things that go bump in the night, and then you should be all good. Besides the trauma, you should be safe once you've settled down in your new house. This, unfortunately, is what happens in Insidious, though, since the spirits are attached to a family member and not the house.

There's a song during one sequence in the film that seems out of place and that is likely the intention of the filmmakers. Tiny Tim himself was a bit of an odd character, originally seen as a sort of comedy musician, only to be relegated to the realms of outsider music as time went on, no longer appreciated for his novelty.

What made him so novel was his high-pitched crooning, his ukulele instrumentals, and strange appearance. In terms of the film, the juxtaposition of his whimsical music and the suspense of the situation only drive home the scares.

Expectations are high that this entry will unlock the mystery of the spirit realm at the series' heart, The Further. Well, that partly depends on what scares you. The gore-filled movies were a huge hit among horror fans, with Whannell and Wan getting lumped into the "splat-pack" of torture-porn filmmakers. Wan in particular was quick to refute the label, telling DownRight Creepy , "the first [Saw film] that I made was a pretty low key, it was a very visceral film but also more psychological, so I always try and point that out.

Which was never Wan's goal. In the same interview, he said the studio strong-armed him into making an R-rated film for his next feature as well, when what he really wanted was to make something PG — more accessible but just as scary, without the crutch of violence. Wan pointed out, "but of course the film comes first and the rating ultimately kind of follows it Insidious was Wan and Whannell's chance to focus on the ominous, psychological horror they were interested in, with the added bonus of keeping them from being pigeonholed as gorehounds.

And in order to ensure the results were accurate, they monitored the film fanatic's heart rates throughout. To measure the tension category, they looked at each person's resting heart rate and average heart rate while watching the movie, meanwhile they categorised 'scares' by looking for peaks in their heart rates.

Analysts then scored each movie out of 10 based on its rank for each of the three measurements - with 10 being the top of the pile while one was at the bottom. At the very top of the pile was Insidious , but, interestingly, Annabelle: Creation actually had the biggest scares, according to Buzz Bingo's data.

In fact, the film's average BPM increase during a scary moment was The Conjuring 2 topped the 'most scares' ranking, averaging 8. So, it was the 'tension' category which ensured Insidious reigned victorious. Viewers had an average BMP increase of