To be fair, Insidious was never quite as generic as it has now become. In fact, that is exactly what the man sitting next to me at the screening was amusing himself by doing. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of horror movies could safely predict not only the next twist, but even certain characters’ replies. Nothing about the manner in which it is directed, or shot, or scored or the way in which its scenes are constructed or they way in which its characters interact with each other is effective in the least. The problem with The Last Key is that it simply doesn’t have the slightest enthusiasm to muster up something fresh for its fans.
Insidious the last key movie reviews series#
In Insidious: The Last Key, Elise must exorcise the demons of her past and together with her sidekicks - Tucker and Specs, still the best thing about this series – she gets to work. She calls it a ‘house’ and not a ‘home’ because it was in that creaky old building that she was tortured by monsters – both real and metaphysical. No one told her this, but Elise’s sixth sense kicked into sixth gear and informed her that this haunting is happening in the same house that she grew up in. No sooner has the man on the line whispered the words ‘New’ and ‘Mexico’, Elise slams the phone down.
The phone rings and Elise jumps, because how could even the slightest sound in movies such as this not be played for scares. Elise Rainier, the demonologist plagued with visions of a ghostly realm she likes to call The Further, is called upon for help by a man living in an old house in New Mexico. For its fourth go-around, series’ writer Leigh Whannell (Wan has long since dove into Atlantis), has crafted an origin story of sorts. James Wan’s original was a creepy little movie with an exciting premise, but little ambition to do much with it. So this year it’s the turn of a franchise that has been good for exactly an hour across four movies. By now we should be accustomed to this ritual abuse that we’re made suffer at the beginning of every year, when movie studios don’t know what to do with stuff they impulsively bought and then promptly forgot on the shelf. And foregone conclusions are rarely scary.But it’s January, and the arrival of Insidious: The Last Key shouldn’t come as a surprise. Anyone who cares enough to see Insidious: The Last Key probably also cared enough to see the other hit films in this series, so their ending is a foregone conclusion. So the only characters we’re invested in - Elise, Specs and Tucker - already have their futures set in stone. It’s hard to feel suspense for people we don’t know much about, and Insidious: The Last Key compounds that lack of suspense by being yet another prequel. They’re either related to Elise, so we’re supposed to care about them, or they’re not, so we don't. Most of the other characters in the film, including the new owner of the house, Ted Garza (Kirk Acevedo), are egregiously underdeveloped. Insidious: The Last Key tries to solve that little conundrum but actually goes too far in the other direction. One of the problems with movies about ghost hunters is that they’re always stepping into the lives of other people, and they aren’t always personally connected to the monsters that they fight. The only problem is, it’s the house where Elise grew up as an abused child, and to confront the demon who lives there - a creepy beast with old-timey keys for fingers - she’ll also have to confront her own tortured past. Elise has only just moved in with her kooky apprentices, but right after they wackily screw up her chandelier (these are the jokes), she gets a portentous phone call from a man who wants her to exorcise his haunted house.
The previous entry, Insidious: Chapter 3, revealed how Elise met her comic relief sidekicks Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), and the new film - which isn’t called a “chapter”, a fact which already implies that this is more like a footnote - is all about their first major adventure as an official team. Insidious: The Last Key is the fourth film in the franchise, and the second prequel in a row. But compared to all the other films in the Insidious series, and to other horror films in general, it’s clearly a bit of a letdown. So compared to that crop of… let’s just call it “crop”… Insidious: The Last Key is a fairly adequate supernatural horror thriller, with a few decent scares and another great turn by Lin Shaye as the unassuming but deeply heroic ghostbuster Elise Rainier. Let’s be honest: there’s no release date that inspires less confidence than the first weekend of January, which has recently given us such horror classics as The Forest, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Texas Chainsaw 3D and The Devil Inside.