Insidious- The Last Key Review Review

   Horror films are a strange quantity to review. Generally speaking, people like comedies if they make them laugh, dramas if they feel something, and action films if things are kept moving and enough stuff blows up or goes flying through the air- specifically on fire. Horror films, though, people tend to like for a lot of different reasons. Some people want to be creeped out, others want to laugh at how stupid they are, some want to see how bloody and gory they get, and some just want their significant other to hold them just a little bit tighter on the way home from the theater.

   It gets even tougher to review a horror film that is the fourth film in a franchise- especially a franchise about which I have very conflicted feelings.

   The Insidious franchise comes from the mind of Leigh Wannell, who gave us the Saw franchise, and Jason Blum, the producer of such varied micro-budgeted films as Get Out, The Purge, Split, and Jem and the Holograms. It should be noted that Insidious was never meant to be a franchise, but when your $1.5 million budgeted horror film makes a $95 million profit, the studio wants you to keep making them. As such, the four Insidious films have a chronological continuity of films 3, 4 (The Last Key), 1, and 2.

  Since this film bridges films 3 and 1, if you have not seen either of those films, then I would not recommend seeing this one. While The Last Key tells a relatively straight forward story in and of itself, it does not go into details such as what exactly is The Further? How does one get to The Further? Who is Dalton? Who is Quinn? Who are any of these characters? Why does a red door matter? And if none of this makes any sense to you, then Insidious The Last Key is not a film for you.

   The sequel to the prequel, this film goes back in time and starts with, and then intermingles, the childhood of current psychic Elise Rainier with a case that is presently taking place at the house where she was raised. We find out why Tucker and Specs wear the outfits they wear and get in on an early case with Elise and her sidekicks.

   Before getting deeper into this film, it must be said that I loved the original Insidious. It reinvented the genre and created an immense amount of tension and scares and creepiness that was all done in a way that looked so easy (and most of the effects and scares were done in a very inventive yet physically simple way which could technically be done by any film student) but needs a real pro of storytelling and directing to be able to pull it off. The strong alpha-female mother character played by Rose Byrne who would do anything to protect and get her son back brought a strong emotional kick to the proceedings that created a real backbone for the story. Byrne and her husband, played by Patrick Wilson,  get a psychic (Lin Shaye) who helped Wilson’s character with some disturbing things when he was younger.

   Then came Insidious Chapter 2 which, in my opinion, turned Byrne’s character into a damsel in distress a few too many times and took away her strength and decision making capabilities, and let Shaye’s psychic (who is still an intriguing character) do the saving of the family.

   For Insidious 3, like I said, we jumped back several years and Shaye’s psychic character is helping a young motherless girl who is stuck in a cast at home, being terrorized by an entity in the building which may be affecting her friends as well.

    In The Last Key, we now go back and try to explain how all these films connect in a way that isn’t just through Lin Shaye’s character while making the film solely about her.

   And this is both a very good and a very bad thing.

   Lin Shaye, as Elise Rainier, is easily the best part of this film. She immediately gains your empathy and is very likeable right off the bat. When she is frightened, you are right there with her, when she feels sad, or overwhelmed, or mildly amused, you feel it, too. Unfortunately, this is not a one person show.

   Horror films almost always need at least a bit of humor injected into the runtime so that a little pressure can be released before the next big scare. The humor used in this film feels weak and forced and the characters to whom it is given do not perform it well and the humor is more cringe-inducing and seems like it comes from a Saturday Night Live sketch mocking the Insidious films instead of from an Insidious film. Another couple of actors also seem to be in that same SNL sketch.

   The scares in the original Insidious film were all very low tech, but here, the need for special effects and CGI, for me, lessened the terror in the film. While some of the shots are indeed, very creepy, after the camera cut from the shot, it didn’t stay with me.

   My problem with this film comes purely down to the script and the direction. Needing to connect all of these films with something other than the psychic Elise Rainier also felt like more of a studio need for another film in the franchise than a plot or story need to wrap things up. Is the main plot idea a bad one? Not at all. In fact, in and of itself, if it could have just told the story of Elise as a child and how it affected her work in modern day, I think it would have been a solid entry, but needing to tie everything together and lace it with some badly timed and written humor creates more of a feeling of ‘meh’ then anything else. Also, several of the performances come across as ham handed, over the top, and don’t fit emotionally. There is also an over-reliance on musical stinging jump scares. If a horror film has nothing else in its playbook, it has almost nothing, and they go to this well a few too many times, instead of trying to create a truly scary scene.

   Yet, with all of these problems, I would also be lying if I said that certain scenes didn’t work on an emotional or creepy level. They do. Special mention must be made for many of the actresses in the film, not just Lin Shaye, who do more for this film than they have any right to do. Even the emotionally cathartic resolutions all hit home for me when, purely by the film and script alone, they didn’t earn it. It’s just that the good is on screen with the bad at the exact same time and it makes the viewing a very jarring one, and not in the ways the filmmakers intended, I am sure.

   If you are a fan of these films, I would definitely say to go see it- not that me telling you not to see it would really keep you away. If you have always been interested in these films, but have yet to see any of them, start with the first one. If you see every horror film that comes out, you will have seen much better and also much worse.

For me in rating films, a film rating is more of a critical rating and the movie rating is more of an audience type of rating.

Insidious The Last Key-

Film Rating- 3

Movie rating- 5