I checked out of the James Wan Hotel seven years ago after Saw, his huge hit with writing partner/sometimes actor, Leigh Whannell. Derivative and only a fraction as clever as it thought it was, Saw was apparently good enough for most to beget a legacy of ridiculously profitable films whose increasing camp factor made the original seem ever more adept in comparison. Those, however, were made under different creative hands while Wan cranked out two more genre-heavy shockers (the alliteratively titled Dead Silence and Death Sentence) that not many seemed to see, myself included.

But fortune found me checking back in with Insidious, director Wan's latest film and first with writer Whannell since Dead Silence -- and what is quite apparently a marked improvement over Jigsaw's formulaic ineffectuality. Novel though it might sound, Insidious is actually foreboding and pretty creepy. Not bad traits for a horror film.

Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) are the married parents of young children, Foster (Andrew Astor) and Dalton (Ty Simpkins). Josh is a schoolteacher, while Renai is a songwriter, and the family has just moved into a beautiful old home that seems perfect for the growing clan.

Insidious is at its best when dwelling in its creepy tone and weakest when it tries to wrap that into a rewarding narrative whole. Rose Byrne a standout, doing solid work here as Renai. Her empathy and desperation for her lost son are palpable and finely tuned. She’s a fairly sensible character, making her easy to pull for, and while there’s not much to her on paper Byrne gives her a nice dimensionality.

Obviously, if it were, Insidious would suck. But it turns out things do go bump in the night in the new abode and it isn't long before Renai senses something is deeply amiss. A box of her sheet music disappears only to turn up in the attic (where she hasn't been before), strange voices waft sonorously from the static of a baby monitor, and the nocturnal meanderings of unknown denizens set off the burglar alarm in the deepest hours of the night. Leering faces appear in the dark corners and the laughter of children not their own echoes down the twilight halls. Meanwhile, Renai is left to deal with the strangeness on her own as Josh oddly begins to log more hours at work, as opposed to coming home.

After their son Dalton, drawn upstairs to the attic, takes a tumble off a rickety ladder he falls into an inexplicable coma. The ominous sense of the supernatural compels the distraught Renai to convince Josh to move to a new home in the hopes that will aid Dalton's recovery. But when the paranormal weirdness follows them Josh and Renai are forced to call in the professionals.

If this sounds a bit familiar that's because it is. Insidious borrows a few things conceptually from Poltergeist (and somewhat Poltergeist II) though that doesn't become so apparent until its third act where, sadly, Wan and Whannell go off the rails and the film devolves into something decidedly silly. It's not that the third act is utterly terrible (though it really pushes it) as much as that the first two were so effective, one of the best "haunted house" vibes since the 1980 George C. Scott scarefest, The Changeling -- another film that works its magic in the confines of a PGish rating. Wan builds a palpable sense of dread and mystery that falls apart once the answers begin to flow. But up until that point, Wan exhibits his growth as a director and his judicious use of jump scares combined with well rendered atmospherics really begin to get under the skin. If a comedy succeeds merely by eliciting laughter then Insidious does by actually getting you to flinch.

But it's as if the last act were directed by someone else, someone without the patience and deliberate confidence so surprisingly exhibited in Insidious' tonally effective opening. There Wan expertly uses composition, lighting and subtly dexterous camera work to draw the audience in while Whannell's script is satisfyingly strong and sure. Once it hits that third act, though, they devolve. Wan falls back into a more kinetic visual style that squanders the atmosphere he built up while Whannell's script takes a left turn for the goofy in ways difficult to get into without spoilers. Indeed, Insidious is at its best when dwelling in its creepy tone and weakest when it tries to wrap that into a rewarding narrative whole. To say it's derivative is one thing but when Lin Shaye shows up as Elise Rainier, a strange but adorably down-to-earth psychic -- ala Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist -- with her slightly comedic paranormal investigator sidekicks, all of the films mystery drains away as the expositional and thematic familiarity of the fruition kills the atmospheric tension Insidious had so effectively accumulated.

Performances are fine, with Rose Byrne a standout, doing solid work here as Renai. Her empathy and desperation for her lost son are palpable and finely tuned. She's a fairly sensible character, making her easy to pull for, and while there's not much to her on paper Byrne gives her a nice dimensionality.

Patrick Wilson is also solid as Josh, though that third act calls on him to do some things that would be demanding of any actor to pull off with a sense of seriousness, particularly during the climax in which Insidious indulges every bad narrative and visual idea it so assiduously avoided up to that point. A nice turn from Barbra Hershey as Josh's mother, Lorraine, was a welcome, less rape-y, hat tip to her own demonic trials in the 1982 supernatural/sexual thriller, The Entity.

Still, it's hard to write off Insidious for dropping the ball. The film takes itself almost completely seriously, which serves it well for much of its runtime in terms of creepy effectiveness. It would have taken a true master to maintain that sort of tone over a finale that even Spielberg would have had a hard time making work. But at least, with Insidious, I have something to gauge Wan's talents against besides Saw, and the next time I notice his name on the marquee I won't be so reticent to stay the night.

Somewhere

Sofia Coppola has come a long way since her critically maligned turn as Mary Corleone in The Godfather: Part III. Her talents as an auteur have been more formidable beginning with her feature debut, the delicately tense The Virgin Suicides, and then her wonderful, Wong Kar-Wai influenced, Lost in Translation, which earned her an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Both films are clockwork character pieces with the flow of Sargasso seaweed wending in their warm narrative currents.

With Somewhere, though, her narrative focus and aesthetics plant their feet more firmly in arty self-referential awareness and satire that only connects if you are particularly fascinated by the innate ridiculousness of celebrity.

Stephen Dorff portrays Johnny Marco, an action movie star who has just hit it big with a huge film. Marco is recovering from a broken wrist at the Chateau Marmont and he's in the midst of an existential malaise; partying with his friend Sammy (Jackass's Chris Pontius); falling asleep on gorgeous, in-room pole dancing twins (who never get naked) and generally staring at the walls when not called upon to attend to the business of being a generic action star.

Insidious is at its best when dwelling in its creepy tone and weakest when it tries to wrap that into a rewarding narrative whole. Rose Byrne a standout, doing solid work here as Renai. Her empathy and desperation for her lost son are palpable and finely tuned. She’s a fairly sensible character, making her easy to pull for, and while there’s not much to her on paper Byrne gives her a nice dimensionality.

Marco has a daughter whose mother dumps her on him for a couple of weeks while she skips town. Cleo (Elle Fanning) is a bright and talented girl and Marco finds his life has more meaning when called upon to play the role of father, though the base nature of his lifestyle and the demands of his career often clash with his growing parental aptitude.

Slowly, as he recognizes the plastic emptiness of his opulent and privileged life, Marco begins to yearn for a deeper fulfillment that all of the money, women, Italian hotels and fame will never give him.

Somewhere is purposeful character study of a father and daughter in the fishbowl of Hollywood fame. Coppola is exploring themes of isolation and fulfillment with a dreamy, poetic minimalism that is admirable and stylistically pleasing while never really achieving a dramatic critical mass; a collection of scenes that feel genuine -- no doubt because some of them mirror Coppola's own life -- but on the whole have the weight of languorous gossamer. The satire has no real punch outside of reinforcing Marco's bewildered nonchalance and to contrast the richness he feels when he can be with his daughter. His redemption as something more than over-praised, pointless human being isn't particularly compelling, even if it is sweet and pleasant. I appreciate Coppola's style here but I have seen this film three times now and I'm still missing its relevance.

But, like her father, Coppola shoots a lovely looking picture and the cinematography by Harris Savides (Milk) is a fine compositional match for Coppola's understated, clean and delicate visual approach. She elicits wonderfully nuanced performances from her cast. Stephen Dorff is somewhat revelatory here as Johnny Marco. He delivers a portrayal that is finely crafted, subtle and real (who knew Deacon Frost had it in him?) while Elle Fanning gives a naturalistic turn in a character that is already well layered in the writing. Fanning renders those details, an admiring yet disapproving daughter, with the skill of an actress older in experience than in years.

Somewhere is the type of film that goes over big with the indie art crowd, where I suspect the popcorn munching variety would be more than a little bored and perplexed. As it is, Coppola has crafted her least accessible film and I suspect she's just fine with that.