Say what you will about the first Insidious... it's legitimately scary. I've gotten mixed feelings on the series, but the original film was terrifying. There may be some debate about the third act and whether or not it ventured into stupid... the first two acts of the first film are unbelievably scary. Go back and watch it. It's tense. It's jumpy. It's frightening. I personally thought the third act of the first film was very creative and viscerally petrifying. However, I can see those who believe that it may have been a little bit silly. I've said this before, this year even, that I think Insidious writer and director pair, Leigh Whannell and James Wan, are horror geniuses. They broke onto the scene with the first Saw which was a LOW budget horror film that was nearly perfect. Then, the studios gave up more money and a bunch of sequels that sucked. Thankfully the two creators parted ways after the first one. Then, they moved on to Dead Silence which, I think if made today, would be much scarier than it ended up being. It was a misfire. Then came Insidious. It was also very low budget, but it was new, and original, and very, very scary. Unfortunately, the studios made a lot of money, gave the filmmakers more money and sequels were made. Each one a little bit less scary and little bit less fun than the original. Then Wan took a break from Insidious and made the amazing The Conjuring, which was the closest to Hitchcock we've seen since, well, probably Hitchcock. However, I get that a filmmaker doesn't want to just make one movie and because he's shown immense talent, Wan was given director duties of Furious 7. However, Whannell wanted to try his hand at directing. So, first his debut, he went with the three-quel of his baby: Insidious Chapter 3. And I wanted to like it. I tried so hard. But, once again, and it will happen to any writer, it was a huge, disastrous misfire.
As I began mentioning earlier, horror seems to be the best when it's low budget. And most horror should be low budget. The most terrifying thing a movie can do is make your mind scare you. If we see the monster, it becomes less scary. But, if we don't see the monster, and we're only given hints of the monster or there are multiple semi-seen monsters... that's when horror really shines. However, when movies are given sequels and money... somehow that just makes the terror fade. I mean, look at the first Paranormal Activity compared to the rest. Hell, The Babadook was scarier than all horror movies released last year. Unfortunately, Insidious Chapter 3 falls into the category of too many sequels, too much money, not enough on the screen to provide a horror-lover (me) with any satisfaction.
For the third entry, it's actually a prequel. Seventeen year old Quinn Brenner has lost her mother. She lives with her younger brother and father (played by Dermot Mulroney) trying to stay sane until she can go off to college. Except weird things begin happening to her that she interprets as her mother trying to get in contact with her. She goes to visit Elise Rainier (Lin Shayne from the first two films) to try and contact her. Elise warns her not to contact her mother anymore... that there may be someone else trying to get to her. This winds up being the case. Instead of her mother trying to relay a message, it's a demon out to get her soul. This demon is quite frightening looking. He's slimy, leaves black inky footprints and wears a breathing mask. He's continually after Quinn night after night trying to steal her pure soul in order to take her with him to his dark world. So, Elise steps in to try and save the day. Sounds like your typical Insidous film, right? Well, it starts off that way for sure... but falls very short.
What made Insidious great was that you didn't know who or what was going after them. The first act is spirits screwing with the family. One of the scariest scenes is when Patrick Wilson sets the alarm to the house downstairs, goes into his bedroom, hears the doorbell ring, then immediately the alarm goes off and when he goes to look the door is wide open. He leaves his wife in bed alone and behind her, through the window, you see the shadow of a figure walk by. In the first film, and even in the second film, evil takes many shapes. It takes the shape of a shadowy figure behind a curtain, of a little boy running around the house then stopping to stare at the wall, of a red-faced Darth Maul looking demon, of a Leave it to Beaver-type family that has clearly been murdered. We get a ton of different looks at evil and the creepiness it can provide. However, in the third chapter all we get is the dude with the breathing mask. Yes. He's very scary the first couple of times we see him... but that's all we get. Once we get used to him, he's not scary anymore. There are no other ghostly apparitions in this chapter. Even when Elise goes into "The Further" she runs into a woman standing in the rain, a woman turned around whose face is on the back of her head (Voldemort, anyone?), and a lady sitting on a chair smiling and singing... none of which instills any fear at all in the viewer.
Then there's the biggest issue that not only is Insidious Chapter 3 not scary... it's also kinda boring. Maybe it was my own expectations based on the writer/director's previous work but I was expecting to be scared like the first one... and sort of like the second one. Yes, I know that the first film was FULL of cheap jump scares (which obviously is the laziest type of scare), however, if it is done right and paired with the right amount of terrifying plotline and visual scares can be very fun and effective. This one almost didn't even try to jump scare you. I mean, there were a few, but I could probably count them on one hand. In between the scares, I kept waiting for the "unknown" to start unfolding and a rising climax of terror to build. Yet, it was just the dude in the breathing mask coming back each time. It became repetitive and, frankly, boring. Then, with the extremely anti-climactic ending... I left the theater feeling very unfulfilled.
Like I said, it was a misfire. It didn't totally ruin the franchise for me entirely. If these guys decided to make a fourth film, I'm all on board because they KNOW horror. It just happens that not every film they put out is going to be a masterpiece. It's funny, a lot of flak recent horror movies get is that there isn't enough character development surrounding the terror happening on screen. Whannell is such a good writer that he over-wrote character. He gave us a lot with Quinn and Elise that it seemed he got somewhat distracted in trying to make us care about these characters (which we really do) that he almost forgot to scare us. The first Insidious gave us horror on a grand scale where as this one remained very small... and failed.
Since it's a prequel, there's really no new information given that the film needs to be seen in order to connect it with the first two. So, there's really no reason to see it. It's a boring and mostly unscary film that's sure to let down most horror fans out there. Don't give up hope on the franchise, but this is one you can definitely skip.
D+
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