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No one can really argue that we live in a time that is the nadir of horror. While occasionally something will breathe a tiny bit of life into the genre in either box office or quality terms (like Paranormal Activity or The Descent), the vast majority of horror films suck and underwhelm. Even any successful-ish horror film is not good; there’s rarely any overlap.

I’ve been a pretty steadfast supporter of Saw, the breakout hit that spawned six sequels. I’ve seen all except the sixth, and even as they get less thrilling and good, they remain fun. James Wan, the writer/director of the first and in-the-credits-for-sake-of-being-in-credits for the rest, hasn’t really gone further in Hollywood besides two forgotten 2007 films (remember Death Sentence or Dead Silence? Yeah.). He and his Saw writing partner Leigh Whannell needed something to get themselves back into the successful horror world. And with a $1.5 million budget that, at the time of writing, has earned 32 times that amount, Insidious may be that one. It may not be a transcendent horror film or something to revitalize the genre (or even, y’know…good), but I haven’t seen true camp like this in a long time. It only takes the opening sequence and title screen to show that.

Insidious seems like a simple haunted house story. Rose Byrne is plagued by visions in her new house she shares with Patrick Wilson and their three children. As usual, no one believes her. To placate her, they move again (what a rough life they lead!), but it turns out that it’s not actually the house that’s haunted. Is it her? One day, after a little fall, their child Dalton (really?) (they also have a child named Foster) ends up in a coma of sorts – mostly just like a permanent sleep. At the same time, Rose Byrne is being more and more haunted. What’s actually happening? Why is Rose Byrne the only one that can see these beings?

My least favorite thing about horror in general are jump scenes. I very much prefer tension-filled scenes, hopefully with slow build-up, to create an overall feeling of dread. In modern horror, of course, it’s all made out of jumps (I have the Nightmare on Elm Street remake in my head). It’s actually a little impressive that Insidious builds off of that. Sure, a lot of the suspense comes from the anticipation of jumps, some of which occur and some of which don’t, but Wan (whose name appears on screen for roughly half the film) keeps a surprising amount of tension throughout. The film itself isn’t really frightening, but the atmosphere is. I was actually quite impressed.

Too bad the movie’s actually terrible. Even by horror film standards, the acting is atrocious, the plot awful, the twists predictable (even I could guess, and I didn’t see Shutter Island coming at all…) and the explanations laughable. I haven’t seen anything in theaters like this for a long, long time. There’s nothing that’s really worse to watch than failed intentional camp (followed closely by intentional camp in general), but there’s really nothing better than true, pure camp. That’s what Insidious is. It’s mockable in just about every aspect (these characters are some of the most ignorant ever, and James Wan doesn’t even realize it).

Yet there’s been nothing really in my recent theater-going memory that’s been as fun. It could just have been because I saw Insidious at a theater that sells beer, but I was on pins and needles not just due to the relatively successful (if incredibly stupid) tension but also to see what awful directing choices were going to come next or what terrible plot twists (really, have there been any DUMBER parents? They couldn’t piece together ANYTHING) were going to happen. I was also waiting to see if Barbara Hershey was actually going to do anything (spoiler alert: she doesn’t).

Maybe this is what horror needs to be now. As I learned from Scream 4, the unexpected has become the new expected. So is the expected (as in, terrible) is the new thing in horror? I don’t quite get it, and I don’t think Wan and Whannel do either. This is a heartfelt project, made with the least ironic intentions possible. That it ends up like this is almost perfect – it’s not even so bad that it’s good. It’s so good because it’s bad (if you can discern the difference). It’s also good because, hey, it’s kinda good.

P.S. In the first scene that shows Patrick Wilson in the classroom, look on the chalkboard for a drawing of Billy the puppet from Saw as well as a cryptic “James Wan x 2.” Hopefully there are more James Wans out there than we knew!