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The Insidious films -- a review


Insidious: The Last Key is supposedly the final chapter in the horror movie franchise that began back in 2010 with the original Insidious, an ingeniously made chiller about the supernatural that was directed by James Wan. The story of the first film is pretty straightforward enough, a young family asks Elise (Lin Shaye), a psychic, for help when they come under attack by ghostly beings that haunt them no matter where they go. Things get complicated when the family’s youngest son, Dalton, won’t wake up from what looks like a coma.


Elise determines that Dalton’s soul is being held captive in a dimension of the dead by a demonic entity, and it looks like a dangerous rescue mission is in order. The original Insidious remains a classic horror movie that manages to be extremely scary without the use of excessive gore. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne are very good as the embattled parents, and the villain, a black and red monstrous creep--that’s actually played by the film’s composer--is unnerving enough to burrow into your nightmares.



Insidious: Chapter 2 starts right up where the first film left off, and it’s an enjoyable entry in the series in how it digs deeper into the overall mythology that it has created. James Wan is back in the director’s chair, and it shows: thanks to his steady hand, the second Insidious film is just as scary/creepy as the first one was, while answering questions that were left hanging from the first one. My only nitpick with the second film is that Rose Byrne felt underused, and I hoped that would be rectified in the third movie.



But my hopes of seeing more of Rose Byrne in the third Insidious film were dashed, because Chapter 3 is a prequel, taking place well before the events of the first film. James Wan is replaced in the director’s chair by Leigh Whannell, who wrote the first two Insidious films (as well as this one). Whannell does a yeoman’s job with the directing, giving us another enjoyable horror thriller (that’s also gore-less) which centers on teenage Quinn Brenner (Stefanie Scott), who’s being targeted by another supernatural specter. Quinn goes to a reluctant Elise for help, and here we see the formation of her ghost hunting team.



The creative team might have wanted to leave things alone at the end of the third film, but they went ahead and gave us Insidious: The Last Key. This movie was originally scheduled to open around Halloween, 2017, but instead got pushed back to early 2018. And after seeing it, I can understand why: it’s just not very good. Adam Robitel takes the helm as director from a script by Whannell (who also plays “Specs” in all four films). The fourth film is very disjointed, with its tone wavering all over the place. There’s too much over the top humor in places where it doesn't belong, and the script tries so hard to work its obligatory plot twists that it ignores characterization.



The one nice thing about the fourth (and final?) Insidious film is that it’s a great showcase for actress Lin Shaye, who not only returns in this prequel, but takes center stage as her character Elise. It’s exceedingly rare for a major Hollywood release to feature a seventy-something woman as its lead character, and while the creative team should get kudos for doing just this, I only wish that the fourth film was equal to Shaye’s talents. The Insidious series, and Lin Shaye, deserved a much better send off. --SF


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