Horror Film Countdown Day 20 – Movies Anxious Parents Should Avoid

Welcome to our countdown to the most anxiety-inducing horror films for parents!  Today is day twenty and we are on film #12!

Each day, we are covering the films I both love and hate because they’re awesome and they give me panic attacks now that I’m a mom.

Thursday the 20th finds us inching ever closer to our number one mom-anxiety freak out film as we explore every corner of darkness between your own living room, all the way into the further…

Disclaimer: Trigger warnings are a given when you talk about horror, but I’m going to say it anyway.  Many subjects covered by horror films are disturbing to parents in ways we can’t possibly understand and each is unique to the parent and his/her experiences. Tread carefully and know your limits.  If this begins to be too much, there’s no shame in closing the window.  Also, this post contains some spoilers throughout. 

12. Insidious 

 Today we dive into the first movie in several days that was NOT “based on a true story”.  Another piece by James Wan, another ghost story turned demonic possession.

Every movie with a new baby needs a horrifying ghost/monster/demon to scare the living crap out of every single parent in the audience, right?

Of course right.

So then, let’s see how this one stacks up; Sick child, check.  Terrifying baby monitor scene, check.  100 year old house with a terrible history, check.  Monster tormenting children, check.  Disturbing monster faces in the dark, check. Dark shadows that are not actual shadows because they’re monsters, check.  Yep, I think we’re covered.

One might think the doll-like spirits, the red demon with the glowing eyes and sharp nails, or even the terrifying old woman haunting our leading man as a child, and while it’s all related to that, nope.  Nope. That’s not it.  

Okay, maybe it is a little bit it, but mostly not.  Okay, yeah it is, but it’s also a few other things that are actually way more important than this parasitic ghost.

This film actually only has two things that truly horrify a parent in a way that could affect them in a throat gripping, heart pounding, panic attack way, and both are related to very real, very earth-bound, human ways that have zero to do with the supernatural:

1. Illness.  A reoccurring theme in almost every one of the stories I’ve reviewed so far has been the helplessness of a parent against an illness they cannot understand, control or cure.

The terror comes from watching a mother trying to cope with her son’s sudden and mysterious coma. We see her learning how to treat him in the home, being taught how to intubate him for feeding and trying not to completely lose her mind as she manages caring for an infant and it’s all so real, we grip our hearts and hold back tears.  That sense of helplessness against loss, against disease, against the unknown.. is one of the worst demons a mother could ever have to face.  Those who don’t have to, pray they never encounter them while those who do pray for healing and to never have that demon’s hands touch anyone else’s life as it has theirs.

2. Once we find out the illness is actually due to the fact that he has a gift of astral projection and never knew it or learned how to do it safely.  While he was out floating around one night, a red and black demon with some real estate issues traps his soul and tries to take over his body… along with every other lost and lonely spirit for miles around.

Once we learn this, it suddenly seems like maybe there’s a chance this little boy can be saved, but that’s not the kicker.  At least, not for me.

Now, most moms probably don’t think twice about these sorts of things, but of course, I do.  Having a child who suffered night terrors, I know what it is to have the thought in the back of my mind, “where is he? What is he fighting?  Why can’t her hear my voice?  Why won’t he wake up?”  This movie provides a potential, terrifying answer.  When the began talking about how he inherited it from his father, when the mother sees the demon standing right behind her him but the father refuses to believe any of this is real, I was struck with such anger for the boy and for the mother.

Once again, we have a father whose rationality is killing is child and will drive his wife insane because he refuses to consider she could actually be right.  How many times has a mother been patronized, patted politely on the head, told “how cute you’re worried about something so silly”?   Is there any mother alive who has not felt the sting of disbelief when she expresses her concerns?  Even when his own mother admits the same thing happened to him as a child when the parasitic spirit of an old woman haunted him for years, he still refuses to accept it.

The scene of realization for the father when he asks for a sign just broke my heart.  The boy had been leaving clues for years.  He had pictures on his walls of the monsters he saw, the places he went and the experiences he had while astral projecting and no one noticed.  Have you ever had something tragic happen to a friend, a child, someone you loved and you never would have thought until after, when you realize there had been clues everywhere?

When someone commits suicide, their family often says, “I had no idea they were this lost, this depressed…” but if they’d really looked, if they’d been seeing the signs, reading the clues, they’d have seen a trail leading all the way to their death if they’d just been aware enough to see it.

Once the husband realizes how wrong he has been, the couple begins working as a team alongside a medium who helps them navigate the “further” (the spirit world that looks an awful lot like a combination of Silent Hill and The Upside Down) to find their son’s missing spirit and bring him home.  The dad realizes he has the same gifts as his son and he’s the only one who can save him.  He dives into the Further to search for him and is faced with the red-faced demon who has trapped his son’s soul.  While he is fighting to save his child, the old woman from his own childhood returns to try and take his body.  They fight to get away, to return to the light and their bodies.  The father sends his son off to return knowing the old woman has him trapped.  Feeling like he needs to understand his own experiences from childhood, he tries to confront the old woman who appears to be laughing at him through a mirror.  As he screams “what do you want!” she becomes more tangible and the scene fades…

The end finds the boy waking, the family crying with relief and joy, and the father returns, as well and all is joyful, grateful and relief, yet… he’s just a bit off somehow. The medium realizes the father never made it back.  The soul within his body is that of the old woman, not the father.  She tries to scream, tries to warn… but he overpowers and kills her.

The end.

So, what have we learned from this movie, kids?  1, Don’t leave your body or someone might squat inside it and 2, don’t shout at angry ghosts in mirrors or bad, bad things will happen to you. (I already knew that last one)