'Insidious' isn't the fright stuff

James Wan, who directed the torture-happy "Saw," and Leigh Whannell, who helped him write it, have teamed up with producer Oren Peli, creator of the low-budget chiller "Paranormal Activity," to create "Insidious," a movie whose fine horror pedigree would seem to promise frights, gross-outs and laughs.

At least it got one out of three.

"Insidious" focuses on schoolteacher Josh (Patrick Wilson) and his songwriter wife, Renai (Rose Byrne), whose house is clearly haunted. After their oldest son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), slips into a mysterious coma, Josh's mother (Barbara Hershey) takes the liberty of calling her old friend Elise (Lin Shaye), a medium. Elise explains that Dalton's spirit is being held hostage by demons in a realm called The Further. There's only one solution: Someone must go get him.

It's one thing to rip off Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist," but quite another to do it so ineptly. When the filmmakers rely on old tricks like flickering lights and shadowy figures, the scares are low-wattage at best; when they bring in their own ideas, the results are downright funny. The Further turns out to be little more than a soundstage full of pumped-in fog and folks wearing pancake makeup -- less a spirit realm than an Alice Cooper concert.

It's hard to reconcile the film's overall amateurishness with the horror veterans behind it, but they're not as clueless as they seem. The shrieking violins of Joseph Bishara's score, cranked up to deafening volume, suggest that the filmmakers know exactly how unscary "Insidious" really is.