Monday
Feb032020
Horror Actressing: Barbara Hershey in "Insidious"
Monday, February 3, 2020 at 8:00PM by Jason Adams
On Wednesday the great Barbara Hershey will be celebrating her 72nd birthday, and per usual once an actress hits a certain age what's the genre that picks up the slack? The "disreputable" Horror genre, that's who, always there to welcome these great talents into its warm, slimy embrace. I simply don't know how one could call one's self an "actressexual" and not be appreciative of all the meaty roles this genre's afforded actresses that nobody else is throwing their way. Yeah yeah maybe they're not always Chekov, but the work is there and the focus is often on women's stories and relationships, and great actresses can make anything sing.
.Ten years ago Hershey hit hard with two prime examples of this -- I'm not going to fall down the rabbit hole of whether Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is a horror film (it is) though, because I want to focus on the other one, one which gifted Hershey with one of the decade's greatest scares...
I speak of James Wan's Insidious, which had her playing Lorraine Lambert, the mother to Patrick Wilson's haunted leading man Josh. (Hershey has spent all of the 10s making bank playing the same role in most of the Insidious sequels, by the way.)
.Lorraine's role in her son's life is complicated, and the key to the super personalized haunting that his family finds itself immersed in. You don't know how complicated at first, though -- she merely seems a little strange and a little cold when she shows up at the film's midpoint. She begins telling a story about a dream that she had the night before that brought her here to visit, one that involves a lot of slow camera-work that lulls us all into a bit of a trance. Hershey delivers the speech wonderfully, slightly emotionlessly and removed, allowing us to zone out to the sound of her honeyed voice. She carries our attention elsewhere with ease. And then this happens:
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There are a lot of factors that go into making a jump scare this excellent work -- the editing is obviously a big one, plus the subtle way Wan's camera closes in on the characters, holding us a little tighter with every second; all the better to goose us in the ribs when the time comes. We lean forward so we can leap back --that's why we're here!
.But Hershey's contributions are just as vital to making this moment work -- she immediately front-loads such a sense of intrigue into Lorraine, and her presence carries with it so much weight, that we're susceptible the second she arrives. She is the tuning fork that fixes our attention and holds us in place long enough for the shock therapy we're giddily awaiting.
Reader Comments (8)
I adore Barbara Hershey, but I could never really get into the Insidious films, though I have an appreciation for them on a craft level.
Yes she's great in Black Swan and YES Black Swan is a horror film, but for me her crowning achievement in the genre is the 1982 film The Entity.
The Entity is so disturbing and weird, thefilmjunkie! I mean that in an appreciative sense.
Slightly related: Have you guys read The Hollywood Reporter piece on Catherine Burns, her co-star in Last Summer (1969)?
The Vanishing of an Oscar-Nominated Actress https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/catherine-burns-inside-50-year-disappearance-an-oscar-nominee-1275646 via @thr
Hershey is a Goddess in anything.
she also did a great job as Cora, the villain without a heart in the tv show Once Upon a Time. That show was never taken seriously, but she was giving Emmy worthy work. Rose McGowen was also good as the younger version of the character.
I find Insidious to be tremendously underrated. One of my favorite horror movies of the decade - probably second only to, well, Black Swan. Its sequels are dull, but the first one is so original and still creeps me out.
I like Hershey in Boxcar Bertha!
The Catherine Burns story isn't so sad. She just chose a different path.