Insidious: Chapter 3 review.
The Insidious franchise takes a step back in time (and quality) with Insidious: Chapter 3.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers
Insidious: Chapter 3
Directed by Leigh Whannell
Written by Leigh Whannell
Starring Dermot Mulroney, Stephanie Scott, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell and Lin Shaye
Insidious: Chapter 3 Review
Everybody loves a prequel. Ok, so that’s probably not true. There are plenty of good prequels out there…but they still get a bad rap. Just last year we saw three great prequels with Pearl, Prey and Orphan: First Kill. It’s enough to almost make you wonder why prequels have such a bad reputation. Well…Insidious: Chapter 3 is here to remind you.
It’s not a terrible movie. It does show a sharp decline in quality for this franchise. A line heading in a massive downslope from the original to Chapter 2 to Chapter 3. Whereas Chapter 2 found an interesting way to weave itself into the fabric of the story…Insidious: Chapter 3 just feels tacked on. Made because it would turn a profit and turn this into a franchise. It succeeded at those things, at least. Perhaps, at most.
Moving on from the Lambert family to focus on new characters was a good idea on paper. Opening the world up to unlimited ghostly adventures and all that. Insidious: Chapter 2 never finds a way to make the new family compelling, however. It is more interested in unleashing cheap jump scares and repeated physical abuse of our lead character Quinn (Stefanie Scott). It’s kind of crazy how many times Quinn is thrown around and injured in the first half of the movie. And that’s after she is hit by a car. It doesn’t feel very in line with what the franchise had been to that point.
The one character who gets something interesting to do is Elise (Lin Shaye). The Elise we meet here is in a much different place than the one who stole scenes in the original. She is a recent widow and is terrified to use her abilities. The Bride in Black is haunting her…and she knows that one day The Bride will kill her. It’s an interesting twist in a movie that doesn’t have many of them. Knowing her fate (seen at the end of the original) wouldn’t jibe with the character as we know her if Insidious: Chapter 3 didn’t give Elise the arc that it does.
Elise’s story is all about acceptance. Accepting that her husband is gone. Accepting that she is stronger than the demon chasing her (at least for now). Shaye is great, as always. Her story is so much better than the main plot of the movie that it suffers a lot when she isn’t on screen. It’s like she is in a different, much better, movie most of the time.
Inevitably, Quinn becomes possessed and Elise must overcome her fears and enter The Further to save her. She runs into her husband but recognizes that it isn’t him. It does give a nice moment of character progression…something that is lacking in Quinn’s story. Quinn begins the movie trying to reach her dead mother…and the mother eventually does show up to help save Quinn in the end…but it doesn’t have the emotional weight that it should. That’s because Insidious: Chapter 3 has a worse story, worse pacing and worse acting than the first two films. Outside of Shaye…there isn’t a lot to like here.
There is one excellent jump scare amid a bunch of lazy ones. Quinn’s father (Dermot Mulroney, wasted here…and with another daughter named Quinn!) looks out the window and sees a body on the ground stories below. The camera pans back to follow Quinn leaning to look out the window too and the demon plaguing her is on the windowsill…trying to pull her out. It’s a rare great moment.
There’s enough fan service to satiate the people who want that. Carl returns for a key scene with Elise. There are references to Josh and the work Elise did with him…even one as on the nose as saying he has his own son now. In case you forgot this was connected to the superior first film. We also get to see Elise meeting the crew she would have in the previous (future?) movies for the first time. Almost all of it feels tacked on…but there are some decent moments.
Strangely, Insidious: Chapter 3 doesn’t bother to explain the cliffhanger ending of Chapter 2. In that movie’s final scene Elise (now a ghost) sees something that terrifies her. It ends, much like the original, with a shocked look and a gasp. Chapter 3 doesn’t have any answers for you. It’s a pure prequel in a lot of the worst ways. Lin Shaye does everything she can to drag a watchable movie out of an unnecessary one. Her success is the only reason to watch it.
Scare Value
Insidious: Chapter 3 eventually gets somewhere worth going…but it takes a lot of unoriginal ideas to get there. Every aspect of the movie is a step down in quality from Chapter 2…let alone the original. Lin Shaye remains a highlight. She’s given more to do here which almost single handedly saves the movie. Everything else…we’ve seen it all before. We’ve seen it all done better.
2/5
Insidious: Chapter 3 Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu and Amazon
Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon
