MPAA Rating: PG-13/ Genre: Horror/ Stars: Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Kirk Acevedo, Bruce Davison, Tessa Ferrer, Javier Botet/ Runtime: 103 minutes
I feel it is safe to start this review off movie goers by reciting film rule #666 (number of said rule is entirely coincidental): if you let a horror series run long enough eventually you will find that in order to get butts in seats it becomes a true necessity to explore new avenues of the series timeline or just say to heck with it and create a whole new timeline altogether. Indeed this should not as a surprise to anyone as for the longest time the Halloween movies (that is BEFORE the Rob Zombie “films” came along) were guilty of giving us this very same thing with now 3 distinct timelines. Of course the reason I bring this up is because Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth installment in this saga, has done the very same by giving audiences a deep dive into the personal history of demonologist Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). Yet despite that I should let you know that at the end of the day while Insidious: The Last Key is a film that works, at moments, on a deeply-visceral level it still manages to fall short due to not really offering the emotional punch that it should possess since this film has a much more personal connection to the series’ consistent hero than the previous three films.
The plot is as follows: Insidious: The Last Key, due to being a prequel to the first 2 films, focuses its attention squarely on franchise hero Elise Rainier as she lives her days helping those dealing with various Dennis the Paranormal Menaces in their lives while also coping with her own demons due to trauma endured when she was a young woman. Of course, this being a scary movie after all, it isn’t long before Elise finds herself forced to finally confront the various nightmares of her youth when the current resident of her childhood home contacts her and begs for help with an especially troubling haunting. So due to being unable to let the past die just yet, and also to forward the movie along, Elise and her trusty sidekicks Tucker (Angus Sampson), and Specs (Leigh Whannell) decide to make the trip and upon arriving find themselves engaged in conflict with an entity that may or may not be behind the trauma that has haunted Elise all these years…..
Now unlike something like the movie Annabelle: Creation, which I use as an example only because it is also a James Wan-produced horror franchise prequel that hit theaters around the same time, Insidious: The Last Key really is the type of film that is definitely improved upon ONLY if you have a broader knowledge of the franchise that it is a part of. This is due in no small part to the fact that, without diving too far into spoiler territory, this is a film that simultaneously acknowledges its status as a sequel to Insidious: Chapter 3, and at the same time also manages to clearly frame itself as a prequel to the haunting of the Lambert family in the first two Insidious movies. Thus by film’s end you really do feel like you have come full circle so that truth be told I feel that the only way they could continue with this franchise is if you moved on from the ending of Insidious 2, and those who have seen that movie will know what I am talking about with the scene at the very end.
That being said however, what might, if you’re the kind of person who worries about this kind of thing, ultimately prevent you from enjoying yourself with Insidious: The Last Key is this film’s wafer-thin plotting. Indeed while to be fair this is a film that moves at a brisk pace and manages to get us through the story reasonably quickly, hopefully so you can have enough time to see something better, but this ultimately proves to be a flaw. That is because audience members will be extremely hard-pressed to find many characters or even narrative threads to properly latch onto and subsequently empathize with and be engrossed by. As such we see that even though there is some solid creature design, Key Face (as this film’s entity goes by) just doesn’t come across as a particularly interesting monster (especially compared to the Lipstick-Face Demon from the first 2). Indeed even the film’s attempts for Elise to mend her broken relationships with her brother (a very much incredulous that he is even in this, but always welcome Bruce Davison) and her alcoholic, abusive father (Josh Stewart whose role as Bane’s Main Henchman in The Dark Knight Rises promised so much better things than this) ultimately don’t pay off. I mean don’t get me wrong: Elise Rainer, even in this, still remains a likable, and truly awesome hero that we want to follow, and Lin Shaye still does a fantastic job of portraying her as she has done ever since Insidious back in 2011 but c’mon guys Elise totally deserves a better movie around her than the finished product that I have just seen.
Another part of why this film doesn’t work as well as it should can also be attributed to a tonal imbalance in regards to the comedy and scares. This is because while Tucker and Specs provide the film with its lighter moments they also tend to force the story too far into goofy territory. Now there have been films where comedy and horror arguably went hand-in-hand and came away winners (take Happy Death Day and An American Werewolf in London for example), but where The Last Key falls in comparison to those two films is sometimes the film puts a little too much emphasis on the comedy, and as a result, we end up with some jokes that I’m not really sure, given the current climate in Hollywood, people may find amusing especially with how Specs and Tucker, 2 guys who look like they are in their late 20’s- early 30’s, both act around Elise’s long-lost nieces who look like they are 16–18 at most (ugh). Indeed while going for laughs in a film that is NOT a comedy mostly boils down to a stylistic choice, I feel that for the story that Insidious: The Last Key is trying to tell, the comedy just honestly doesn’t feel quite right at home this time around amongst the spooky proceedings.
However if things like character and plot are things that for your personal tastes do not necessarily matter to you when it comes to a film like this, and you are instead at the end of the day just merely looking for thrills (which I will most definitely concur is a fair demand from a film like this), then Insidious: The Last Key definitely delivers its fair share. Indeed if there is a single person amongst the cast and crew who could be this film’s most valuable asset it would have to be director Adam Robitel. I say this because Adam does a fantastic job of knowing just how to draw tension out for as long as possible and simultaneously misdirect audience attention in order to allow a scare to come from left field, and scare the unholy terror out of you. Suffice it to say that gift is on full display in this film with the two sequences that, for me at any rate, stand out amongst the rest of the film’s are the opening scene (set against the backdrop of a house adjacent to a prison) and a sequence in which Elise finds herself opening a series of suitcases that have been mysteriously placed in a sewer pipe (maybe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles forgot their luggage or something. Did anyone think of that?).
Of course that being said you really can have too much of a good thing, and that is very true here. That is because I can promise you that die-hard horror fans will definitely recognize some of the tricks that are being brought out to play here. Indeed from a first-person night vision sequence to a flashback following a pair of kids being scared in a bedroom, Insidious: The Last Key really does tend to lean towards the familiar to achieve its scares which, despite being handled pretty well from a filmmaking point of view, is still a bit of a disappointment. I mean I definitely feel like it would’ve been a wonderful treat to see this, at one time, groundbreaking franchise continue to try to freshen things up with some bold, new ideas the way quite a bit of the horror film community has been managing to do for the past couple of years now, but alas that is not the case here.
All in all though despite being skillfully directed and coming equipped with a to-be-expected winning performance from Lin Shaye, Insidious: The Last Key just simply is not as good as the previous entries. Indeed while the scares come hard and fast, they ultimately find themselves undermined repeatedly by a paper-thin plot and quite a few of the supporting characters. So unless you are an avid horror aficionado, someone who has seen the first 3 and want to see where this one goes, or (even rarer in this world) a fan of a film known as The Taking of Deborah Logan then this is the film for you. If however you are none of those and/or never plan on being any of those things, then this is one nightmare you can definitely afford to miss. On a scale of 1–5 I give Insidious: The Last Key a 2.5 out of 5.
