Friday, January 5, 2018

Insidious: The Last Key: Better Than The Last Two, Still Not Worthy Of The First


Insidious was a genuinely scary movie. It was a great original horror movie from one of my favorite horror directors, James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring). You know it was at least a decent movie because it has spawned three sequels (well, one sequel and two prequels). James Wan's movies are usually so good that they'll keep going with the movies for years after he's already left. There have been eight Saw movies since his first one. The Conjuring as a sequel, two Annabelle spinoffs, and The Nun spinoff due later this year. Insidious: The Last Key is a sequel to the third film, which is a prequel to the first film. Leigh Whannell, writer of the first film, returns to write the fourth entry to the franchise bringing in new director Adam Robitel (whose filmography is - a bad Netflix movie called The Haunting of Deborah Logan and the absolute worst Paranormal Activity sequel). And while The Last Key is a huge step above Insidious Chapter 3, a bad third act and scenes left on the cutting room floor make this film something lesser than it could have been.

Set after the events of Chapter 3, we find Elise Rainier back to her old Poltergeist-hunting tricks with partners Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specks (Whannell). She receives a call from a man asking her to help him out with a haunting in his house - which just so happens to be the house Elise grew up in. She travels to New Mexico and finds out that the spirits that haunted her as a child have remained in the house. We get a preview into her childhood, when she's led to the basement and inadvertently releases a demon and is accidentally involved in the death of her mother. Her father, a nonbeliever in ghosts who believes it best to beat these crazy ideas out of his young daughter, forces Elise to run away from home. Once in her home, the spirits return sending her messages to return to "the other side" and put a stop to it once and for all.

If this all feels like your standard Insidious fare, then you're mostly right. We get a new creepy looking demon, we get a haunted person/house, and we get a trip to The Further. But, what Whannell has done is added a few new creepy layers to this film. There's a side plot about women going missing and the demons we face who aren't dead, but living among us, etc. These are ideas that haven't exactly been explored before in the other films and it was an interesting addition to the franchise. Lin Shaye returns to portray Elise and she's generally been the strongest actor among the films. She's also the most fascinating to follow. It's nice that this film is a direct sequel to the prequel because the filmmakers don't have to provide any more contrivances to explain how she's still alive (her character dies at the end of the first movie... yet, four movies deep she's still here). Tucker and Specks do provide, as per usual, the comic relief of the movie. Most of their moments are brief and humorous - though there is a bit of creepiness in their fight to entice Elise's niece into a date... and there's a forced kiss at the end that, in today's climate, feels WAY out of place.

There's decent scares in this movie as well. Insidious has really been known as the king of the jump scares. If that's what you look for in a horror movie, then look no further because that part of the structure has not been deviated from. There are jump scares-aplently. However, they're getting a little more creative with the scares. Whannell and Robitel realize that audiences know now when to expect the scare. They've crafted a few scenes in the movie that actually surprise with the scare and I have to respect that a little bit, even if the jump scare is the laziest/easiest one. But what this chapter does better than the previous two is it also contains moments of true terror and suspense without resorting to the jump scare. Moments when the movie goes quiet, eerily silent and the tension could be cut with a knife are moments when the horror really shines through. If you're planning on seeing this movie, hopefully it's in a relatively empty theater because if you get even one douchebag in your screening who likes to giggle or talk, the moments will be ruined. Thankfully my (surprisingly full) theater didn't have any of these people. This Insidious has certainly matured with the scares and the terror.

But, where it's matured in creating fear, it's devolved in story. Especially in its third act. I went into the film with an open mind and for the first hour or so, I was sold. I liked the different route they were going with the movie, but when Elise enters The Further, all sense is lost. First of all, some of the most enticing moments from the trailer, when Elise enters the further... has been CUT FROM THE FILM. There were a couple of images from the trailer that stuck with me that I was seriously looking forward to. These moments included:






None of these scenes end up in the final cut of the movie and I can't for the life of me understand why. It's not like they needed to be cut for time, the movie is already a pretty short hour and forty minutes long. And if they were looking for time to cut, it should've been earlier in the movie. One of the first scenes with Elise, she gets a call from the guy living in her childhood home asking her to come help him out with the spirits. She says she's sorry, but she can't help. Then, the next scene, she talks to Tucker and Specks and says she feels like she has to go - even though there was no moment in between that convinced her to change her mind. After that, she tells Tucker and Specks that she has to do this alone. In the very next scene they show up with a motor home and claim, "well, you have to take us now!" - and they get to come! Again, no reason for her to change her mind. There's plenty of time for you to cut and add in these scenes that are visually frightening and add some extra ambiance and scares to an already creepy film. I mean, hell, even this scene didn't make the cut:




I'm not sure why a lot of the moments from the trailer - moments that convince us to actually come and see the movie - were cut from the film. But, I can tell you, the film suffers for it. Then, the very end of the film is just terrible. What was mostly screams and gasps from the large audience I saw the movie with turned into unintentional giggles and laughs - not something you want from the climax of a horror film. It's like Whannell didn't exactly know how to end his movie, so he decided to create new rules (that fill the rest of the story with major plot holes) and bring back a character (which makes no goddamn sense at all) to help create an ending that is so laughably bad I can't believe no one involved with the film had the sense to offer a different solution to the problem of the end. Then, there's a tie-in to the first film that's rushed, off putting, and feels like a scene added after the film had wrapped as pressure from the studio to force a tie-in. It's difficult to separate the ending of a film with the rest of the film because if the end leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, by proxy it leaves a bad taste in your mouth for the entirety of the film - and the first two acts aren't bad. I mean, they're better than literally anything in Chapter 3.

So, once again, I can recommend this film if you're looking for a throwaway horror movie that will cause the audience to jump, fling some popcorn in the air, and have a decent time. Just expect that the ending is going to fall well short of the rest of the movie and leave you somewhat unsatisfied. I was hoping this would be the end of the franchise, so that we can let it rest for good and get some new, fresh horror movies to give nineteen sequels to, but alas, there does seem like they opened the door to yet another potential spinoff. And I, like the Alzheimer's patient that I am... will probably see all of them.

C

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