INSIDIOUS **

You don't need the creepy credits, although they are well done, or Joseph Bishara's ultra-creepy score to tell you that INSIDIOUS is going to be 'a scary picture'. All you need to know is that it's about a nice couple, (Rose Byrne and the preternaturally youthful Patrick Wilson), and their unbearably, sycophantically cute son and his siblings moving into a new home to know that 'evil' in some shape or form ain't far away.

Once upon a time a new home meant Mr Blandings was building his dream house, now it's all Amityville horrors. Actually, INSIDIOUS isn't at all bad; here is a movie that does exactly what it says on the tin, giving us the heebie-jeebies if not quite scaring the living daylights out of us and the story is a tad more original than the usual possession/haunted house movie. Eventually the family have to bring in some psychics to help them get rid of the creatures that have followed them from one home to the next which in turn leads Wilson into taking an out-of-body journey into his past in the film's protracted climax. Just where are Ghostbusters when you need them.

If we're not talking Oscars here, (basically this is nothing more than a first-rate Saturday night chiller), it at least shows that director James Wan is in full control of his material and even if her role is nothing more than filler, (here playing Wilson's naturally concerned mother), it's always nice to see Barbara Hershey.