Insidious (2011)

American-made horror flicks, especially ones rated PG-13, are a dime-a-dozen and pointless as alcohol-free beer. The urge to shock and cut a swath through the audience is undone by the need to ensure 12-year-olds can get in. “Insidious” is an exception. Dig it: Ghosts and ghouls rule your new dream house, but it isn’t the home that’s haunted. It’s your child. Spooky. That’s the premise that drives our parent heroes (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) to tumble desperate into the arms of some ghost busters straight out of “Poltergeist.” Dig it further: Imagine, guys, coming home to see our wife talking to your own mother … and a priest. (I’d shit myself.) As with “Poltergeist,” what we don’t see is the real shocker, not blasé gore. The rating lulled me in, and the film whacked me on the head, “Sixth Sense” style. Too many scenes at the end are dark to the point of murky (and baffling) confusion, and the villain is murkier, but “Insidious” had me up at 3 a.m., listening for spooked baby monitors we do not own. B

Angels and Demons (2008)

Ron Howard’s “Angels and Demons” is a vast improvement over his previous Robert Langdon film “The Da Vinci Code.” It’s also a sharper, better version of the over-stuffed, preposterous Dan Brown book from whence it came. So, all told, it; is just mediocre, not brain-drill dead piss. It dials the BS from 700 on a 10-scale to about ... 475. (If you are dumb enough to believe a single word Brown writes, then lack of faith in God is the least of your problems.) The plot: Harvard symbol guru/professor Langdon (Tom Hanks, just OK) is called to Vatican City to help track down a mad man who has killed a scientist in Switzerland, kidnapped four candidates for pope, and planted a massive anti-matter bomb somewhere in the holy city. All in one day. Busy fucker. Dan Brown never strays far from his blueprint, every thing in “Code” is here. There are more holes in the book/film than gold coins and raped boys in the history of the Catholic Church, but Howard’s use of on-location Rome shots and ingenuous visual effects to recreate the Vatican take us inside a forbidden locale. The is pure all make-believe hokum. Just like church. C+