Lin Shaye Faces The Darkness...

One of the key elements in a good haunting yarn is the presence of an eccentric paranormal investigator or two. People who are here to help but at the same time give off a slightly sinister aura, as if they’ve taken trips into the darkness one too many times and have returned a little touched.

CLICK TO PRE-ORDER @AMAZON

In Insidious, as it becomes apparent that something supernatural is attacking her son, Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) accepts the council of her mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) and brings in Elise Rainier, played by the remarkable Lin Shaye.

Alongside her two assistants Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), they add a welcome vein of ink-black humour to the movie, which sharpens up the scares by creating the kind of horror rollercoaster effect used so brilliantly in movies like Poltergeist. where the eccentric psychic (played by the irreplaceable Zelda Rubenstein) brought laughter as well as steely determination to bear against the forces of evil.

INSIDIOUS (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (£15.99) and Blu-ray (£19.99) by Momentum Pictures on 12th September 2011.