Judging from the interest my review of the INSIDIOUS stage production received, there are clearly folks who wanted to know more about it. I understand that people wanted the trainwreck view, but there are clearly plenty of those statements out there. What’s sad is that there are write-ups about it that are just straight-up lazy and only offer snark without having seen the show.
Snark is easy.
It’s low-hanging fruit.
There is no nuance and no depth to it.
It’s a fat joke made for a quick laugh.
I figured I’d write up the show experience as fully as I can recall it.
Since it seems the show is dead now, it’s good to have it recorded as something that existed, whether people wanted it to or not.
On entering the theater the lights were already down and they were running a film of a previous case that the characters of Specs and Tucker had worked on previously that had to do with a haunting and a little girl. The lights come up and the pair are introduced and they run onto the stage dressed in similar attire to the first film – white button-up shirts and dressier pants.
The pair introduce themselves and the idea of the show – that it is NOT Insidious from the movie, but this is their touring show that details their cases and the methods they engage. This is where we learn that the pair had sold their story to the movie studio to cash in on their work and that they don’t necessarily like how they or their work is portrayed. Therefore, this is meant to clear the air so we see what they do.
They show off some of their equipment, talk about cases in general, and detail how the show will consist of learning about their methods and the technology they have created and use. They then decide to talk to the audience about ghost encounters they have experienced. (Here is where we start to see SOME real interaction mixed with staged stuff, as far as what we get from folks in the audience). We hear some stories, they use a piece of equipment to see if people have “energy,” and we then learn about the haunted history of the theater. Before this, though, we are introduced to a “super-fan” who has been following the duo around and who is now there once more, and they are none to happy to see him.
Two ushers (one a plant and the other probably an usher, maybe?) come up on stage and talk about the haunted history of the area – in this case, the Fisher Theater in Detroit – and how people have experienced things in said theater. We hear about a young boy that survived a fire that took the rest of his family, and he was taken in at the theater. Sadly, he died tragically when he fell off the stage due to the lights at the edge of the stage – ghost lights – being out. The boy now haunts the theater.
Specs and Tucker decide they want to contact the boy and start to to try reach out to him. This is where the tone of the show starts to change a little as one of the ushers, the plant, takes one of the researchers into the back of the theater to look for the ghost boy. We see a quick glimpse of a small figure via a camera the ghost hunter is wearing and then things return to the main stage.
We get another glimpse of the footage from the beginning of the show detailing that case, and the two are upset as this footage was to have been erased. They work to erase it again and then welcome a guest to the stage. This guest is a researcher who has come to talk about how there is no such thing as ghosts and hauntings, to the chagrin of the two. They had hoped she was there to lend more credence to their work but she insists that it is all just manifestations of group beliefs. Several audience members are welcomed to the stage and put into gear to help them detect spirits, and then the guest begins a seance and the theater is welcomed to join in. Lights flicker. There are strange sounds. Someone in the audience – someone we had seen before – as they are the third researcher – Elise in the movies – who has left the group. It’s HER work that started the group, and she is there to stop them. She believes they are channeling things that they do not understand.
She takes the stage and there is back and forth between her, the duo, and the guest speaker. The audience members head backstage to investigate, all shown via cameras planted around, but are surprised by something horrifying, and two members of the group disappear. During this we find out that a door HAS been opened, and something has been welcomed. The guest speaker’s assistant becomes possessed by someone called the Puppet Master and they declare we are all part of their plan now. The Puppet Master ends up using this new “puppet’, the assistant, to snatch the guest speaker and to drag them into the Further. This is a really neat and effective effect where the possessed woman is floating, and the guest speaker is pulled inside of her and disappears.
With this horrifying twist we learn that the boy that haunts the theater was a lure to get the Puppet Master more bodies – the audience – for spirits to inhabit. The group decides that it’s time for the former member of the team to send Specs and Tucker into the Further. Naturally, they are not too excited at this prospect but are encouraged that they can do this. They are put into a trance, similar to what we see in the films, and in another neat effect, are sent into the Further. They find the Red Door, and from it emerges the creepy woman from the first film, though she is dispatched by the usher that has been party to everything happening as she was sent into the Further to assist Specs and Tucker. Here, we learn more about the Puppet Master and learn that he is, in fact, the Lip-Stick demon, and we see him and get to hear “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” There is a struggle a battle, and the trio manages to rescue their people and escape before the demon can stop them.
At the end the other audience members return, as does the assistant, and it appears that there has been a happy ending. The production ends on a stinger where a giant skeletal hand emerges from the darkness behind them and the lights go out.
Show ends.
I GUARANTEE I missed some finer details, like character names.
It was a week ago, and I have more going on in my life than just keeping this stuff stored in the brain box.
This is essentially it, though.
There is comedy.
There are also scares.
It was different than the movies. More like a side story. They set this up to begin with though where they say – hey, that’s the movies, this is not the movies.
I can see why people may be upset that this isn’t 1:1 like the films.
That’s fair.
The price of tickets was probably large – I didn’t purchase them.
Also fair to be mad at, though, welcome to the post-COVID world and that reality.
As I said previously, I went in with no idea what this was gonna be, and as such, I loved it. It was fun, it was spooky, and it was funny. It engaged my wife and I and we had a blast with it. Mileage varies. I don’t think it deserved the fate it seems to have gotten but this is life. I just think it’s a shame that it was received so poorly as it kills these sorts of expansions of works like this.
Hey, lots of people didn’t like it.
I offer that lots don’t like the films either.
*shrug*
Whatever.
I dug it.
Life goes on.
There you go.
…c…
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 