Insidious Sparknotes

James Wan’s 2011 supernatural American horror film, Insidious, depicts the story of an American nuclear family who move into their new home. Although it’s a fresh start for the Lambert family unexplainable haunting occurs after their oldest son, Dalton, falls into an inexplicable coma. Shortly after Dalton’s parents, Josh and Renai Lambert, experience a series of disturbing, paranormal encounters with evil apparitions. Josh’s mother, Lorraine, seeks a medium for potential answers in why the Lamberts were targets of gruesome spirits. Dalton’s family learns Dalton inherited the gift of astral projection from his father and is the only vessel that can bring Dalton back to safety from The Further. The Further is a dark world where time is unknown

illusion, and enigma can be seen in the second scene when Renai is alone in her home and encounters the little boy. The scene starts with Renai playing a disc on her disc player. The song playing in the disc player portrays a melancholic mood and gives the audience a peaceful mood as we follow Renai around the house doing her house chores. The audience is meant to experience a calm and relaxed state. This relaxed state is quickly overturned when Renai goes outside to throw the trash. It is important because once Renai steps out of the house it is like she stepped out of the danger zone. When she exited the house the disc was somehow stopped and the music changed instantly. When Renai looks into her house through the window she sees an unknown entity dancing in her living room. The camera is strategically structured to follow Renai’s movements when she looks into her living room from an outside window. Quickly, Renai runs back inside to find the boy gone. At this point, the music is completely gone and gives the audience insight in hearing Renai panting and looking puzzled as she searches for the boy. It is ironic that the boy is dancing to a happy, upbeat song while Renai is full of terror trying to comprehend. Therefore, Renai cannot distinguish what is happening and does not know whether the boy is a ghost or a live human being. According to Al-Issa’s (1995) theory of hallucination, [individuals] need to take into account sociocultural context because “…cultural attitude towards hallucinations seem to affect a person’s familiarity with their own fantasy and imagination, an this, in turn, may contribute to the confusion between reality and fantasy” (368). A possible solution is how distress Renai was feeling after having to deal with Dalton’s complicated comatose and other unexplainable paranormal events. While Renai is looking around for the boy she hears an acousmatic sound, which alerts the audience that something bad is about to