More than any other genre, horror is known for churning out
sequel after sequel. That’s one of the benefits of working on the cheap, all
you need is one strong opening weekend and you can make a profit, and after a
few installments, you can pull that off based on name recognition alone. The
latest horror franchise to expand the brand is Insidious,
which drops the tepid, totally generic Insidious: Chapter 3
in theaters this weekend.
Leigh Whannell, writer of the previous installments, takes
over the director chair from his partner in crime, James Wan, who has moved on
to helming movies like the billion-dollar-earning Furious 7
and the upcoming Aquaman. Insidious 3 is
Whannell’s directorial debut, he doesn’t even have so much as a short to his
name, and what he delivers is an absolutely paint-by-numbers horror offering
that brings nothing new or fresh or even moderately appealing to the table.
There is nothing particularly egregious going on, but neither is there anything
of any interest to be found.
A prequel set before the events of the Lambert Haunting from
the first film, Insidious 3 follows Quinn Brenner (Stefanie
Scott from the upcoming Jem and the Holograms adaptation). A gifted dreamer with hopes of attending a
prestigious New York drama school, she turns to Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), a
reluctant psychic who can communicate with the dead, in the hopes of getting
advice from her dead mother. But as it turns out, Quinn has been targeted by a
sinister demon that answers the call from the other side, and he torments her
throughout the rest of the movie.
What follows is only scary if you’ve never ever seen a
horror movie before in your life. Shadowy figures show up, lurking in the
corner of dark rooms. Characters do things like look under the bed, seeing
nothing, but when they stand up, surprise, there’s some nasty looking demon man
standing behind them. Every cliché, trope, and platitude the genre has ever produced
gets trotted out, and as the result is that the 97-minute run time drags along
at a snail’s pace.
Whannell never succeeds in creating any of the atmospheric
tension that comes so naturally and effortlessly to Wan, who has a cameo, and
is the strongest element of the previous films. Just because you make a room
dark doesn’t make is scary, and putting slimy footprints up a wall doesn’t
help. After an accident leaves Quinn with two broken legs, the film employs the
old invalid-who-can’t-escape set up as the secret history of her building is,
vaguely, revealed. Hell, there’s even a “Magical Negro” character who lives
next door and is full of crazy talk, but maybe, just maybe, she can see things
no one else can and speaks the horrifying truth.
It doesn’t help matters that there’s little emotional
investment in the characters. Quinn is supposed to be distraught over the death
of her mother, something many people can relate to, but aside from occasionally
saying she misses her loved one and that her mom was, “like, um, cool,” you
never feel that loss. At home, her set up is stock horror movie dysfunctional
family. Her father (Dermot Mulroney), is distant and busy, relying on Quinn to
essentially raise her younger brother, a character who exists in the script for
no other reason than to deliver one plot point later on in the movie.
At best, Insidious 3 is a facsimile of
low-budget ‘70s supernatural horror, but it never amounts to anything more than
that. It’s a beat for beat rehash, which is something that has been done so
many times before, there’s nothing of any interest left after being Xeroxed so
many times. Every last jump scare is placed precisely where you expect it—if
you suspect a hand is going to reach out from the darkness, it does; if you
think there’s going to be a half-rotten corpse standing behind a character when
she turns around, that’s exactly what you’ll see.
Insidious: Chapter 3 is just completely
middle of the road in every conceivable way. The performances aren’t bad, but
no one brings much besides workmanlike space filling to their roles, the story
is bland and predictable, and the connections to the earlier films are strained
and unnecessary. If they had changed the names and a couple of actors, this
would just be another supernatural horror film. As a fan of horror, a genre all
to often relegated to direct-to-home-video market, you want to support it when
it gets a big theatrical release, but can’t help but hope that it will be
better and more original than Insidious: Chapter 3. [Grade: C-]
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