Insidious: Chapter 3

Dir: Leigh Whannell

2015

**

Horror films of the last twenty or so years have been very samey. You can't beat the classics, now and again a great horror comes along but more often than not the film is then tarnished by a string of inferior sequels. Some sequels have often ended up being better than the original (Evil Dead, Friday 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Howling) but generally that is because they are worse than the original - they don't take themselves as seriously and are even laughable in some cases. Evil Dead 2 is better than Evil Dead as it is more refined for example, while The Howling 3 is so bizarre, it ends up being more entertaining that the billion other sequels that followed the original put together. Most modern horror films pass me by, I'm not generally interested, I will watch the first but if I don't like it I will stop there. Insidious didn't interest me initially and I only caught it once it made it to television but I found myself being pleasantly surprised. It was a classic haunted house story but with a little more depth and an entertaining fantasy element. It had some legitimately good jumps-scenes with original and clever scenarios. The follow up felt unnecessary and wasn't as good but there was something about it that felt acceptable and I ended up not hating it. There really wasn't a need for a third film, the original story had reached it's conclusion, the film did well though so the inevitable prequel was made. The story should have been a 'how they met' scenario - which it was in the end - but by and large it’s a remake of the original story but not a very good one. I found the character Elise Rainer to be refreshingly mysterious in the original and follow up and I generally believe it is best to leave most characters as they are and at their strongest. I’m happy for Lin Shaye after all the years she’s been mistreated by the Farrelly Brothers but I’m not sure the third film does her any favours – even though she is firmly the best thing about it. Dermot Mulroney and Stefanie Scott play father and daughter clichés and neither actor do a particularly good job of it. How Tucker and Specs meet Elise Rainer was probably what the fans of the franchise were most looking forward to but this is handled in the most under-whelming way they possibly could. The ideas were cliché and half-written, the film is creepy in place with some great ‘jump’ moments but by and large these are cheaply done with unforgivable tricks. Having something scary revealed out of shot will obviously scare the audience but it makes no sense when they are clearly in view of our protagonist. It’s a lazy trick that Hitchcock was ridiculing over fifty years ago – I can’t believe horror directors are still doing it. The worst thing about the film however is the villain. The ‘Man who can’t breathe’ has to be one of the crappiest ghosts ever to have appeared in a horror film. Firstly, he has no back story. Secondly, he is dead, he doesn’t need to breathe. He is literally one up from ‘Ghost with a headache’ and ‘Demon with mild arthritis’. Instead of trying to cast him out with spells and what have you they could have simply just laughed at him and I’m sure he would have gone away. Although many are laughing at this franchise and it’s still here so I guess I’m wrong.