The new movie year always starts with a whimper, doesn’t it? Once proud franchise Insidious rushed in to become the first new film of 2018 … and it shows. The biggest problem with the new installment is neither a harried script nor half-assed direction. I mean, yes, it has both, but neither is the primary issue. The most glaring weakness of Insidious: The Last Key is that franchise ran out of characters. In lieu of new people and potentially better actors with afterlife issues, Insidious: The Last Key explored the childhood of recurring seer Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), who probably who have been better off homeless.
The Rainiers lived on the grounds of a New Mexico federal penitentiary. This is somehow justified by dad’s work as an executioner for the prison. Yeah, that’s work you wanna do in-house; sure, it makes sense that he lives on the grounds. While I imagine the family exposure to hardened criminals was minimal for wife and children, the younger boy takes sadistic delight when the power flickers signifying the execution is underway. This is just so healthy for everybody involved. Oh, and Elise sees ghosts. And one kills her mom.
Now, I would have guessed that if you live on prison grounds, have children exposed to state executions, have some sort of scary, violent specter problem, one which ended in strangled mom, you might consider moving. Gosh, I guess some families are weaker than others, cuz the Rainiers didn’t quit. In retrospect, I’m not sure this plot point was any sillier than the fact that mom appeared to be strangled by an Ethernet cable, which is a pretty good trick for 1953.
FF to present and Elise and her Ghostbusters (Angus Sampson and screenwriter Leigh Whannell) get a call from New Mexico. You guessed it – time for more fun in the old family homestead. Ahhhhh, memories. I’m sorry; I really can’t get over the idea of continuing to live in a creepy haunted house after mom was murdered in the basement. Did I say “creepy?” That’s the catchword for Insidious 4. Bad enough that Elise has to revisit the incarceration-obsessed spirit from her childhood, but somewhere after her return to Mayberry, so-to-speak, Elise gets to meet her adult nieces for the first time. In this touching diner scene reunion, Angus Sampson’s
“endearing” horndog routine gives creepy new meaning.
Sounds like I hated this film, huh? Not quite. There’s a section in Act II where the mystical meets real. That was quite unexpected. Hey, that ghost isn’t a ghost! Is it real or is it Memorex? These moments didn’t make the film scarier, but they did add a level of police-procedural type reality that these films have been missing. Mostly, however, the experience of this iteration came off as Insidious-lite: whatever chills and eeriness the other films in the series had to offer has ebbed considerably, like the ocean at low tide. Yeah, you can still boogie board and body surf on these ripples, but it’s just not the same thrill as almost drowning, is it? I felt like Insidious: The Last Key is currently advertising itself for a Netflix TV gig, a lower standard for a less choosy audience. Yet calling this harmless horror “awful” invites more pain than the film itself. Truth is, if I set the low bar here, I’m in for an awfully long 2018.
These Insidious films be excitin’
With evil from places un-brighten
And yet, oh no!
Where’d they all go?
You’ve run out of actors to frighten
Rated PG-13, 103 Minutes
Director: Adam Robitel
Writer: Leigh Whannell
Genre: Ghostbusters!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Septuagenarian mystics
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Ghosts with key fetishes
