I’m going to start this by saying I’m a HUGE fan of the Saw franchise, even beyond the first three films. James Wan and Leigh Whannell are inspirations to me as an aspiring horror creator… That being said, other than The Conjuring, I haven’t gotten into the other work I’ve seen of theirs. After watching The Conjuring films, I decided to start Annabelle, and I wasn’t able to get through the whole thing.
So far, I’ve watched the first three Insidious films, and read the scripts for the first two. I don’t have much to say about the third one, so we’ll just discuss the first two. First, I love that these scripts I found aren’t final drafts. So many parts vary from the final product, and that’s nice to see.
Like with Annabelle, the Insidious films have a slow burn. Things got interesting for me about halfway through the film. In the first one, I really liked that Josh had passed his astral projection powers to his son, but had repressed his memories of the ability. I also liked being able to see ghosts through photos, which is why Josh doesn’t take them. It is subtly hinted at in the film, which was great (the script had a screen that felt more heavy-handed about him not wanting to take photos, via a school picture day.) There was a lot of dialogue that was edited down or cut altogether. Some of it seemed on the nose. The most interesting thing about this script compared to the film was Elise didn’t die at the end. I was excited to read the second one to see if it followed the plot of this draft, but it follows the movie and starts with Elise dead.
Something that bothered me SO much about Chapter 2, and I hope it bothered any of you who watched it, is it acts like the ending of the first movie didn’t happen, despite replaying the last few moments of the first film. Renai KNOWS that possessed Josh killed Elise, but for some reason, she goes through the movie as if she doesn’t know her husband is possessed. I didn’t understand that, and I was hoping the script would make sense of that, but it didn’t. The second half of the film is when things got interesting. I LOVED the call back to events in the first film, where you learn some of the scary stuff happening was caused by astral projection Josh. In the script, it is Renai who gets to The Further via Dalton. I liked it better with Josh doing it since he already has the ability to go into The Further.
Though I liked the film better than the script, I liked the ending in the script more than the one in the film. In the film, it is Specs and Tucker going to help some new family. Wasn’t interested. In the script, Renai comes into Dalton’s room and sees him painting his face with red crayon, a la the red-faced demon from the first film. Though, I can see why they may not have wanted to go in that direction, as this film was about Josh being possessed. Dalton being possessed could have been a little too much, been there, done that.
It’s also interesting how compared to Saw, where pretty much everyone dies, these films have a very low body count. But, that’s my thoughts on the films. I didn’t love them, but I didn’t hate them either and I think I’ll continue with the series. Hell, I may even go back and finish Annabelle.
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