INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 (Leigh Whannell). 97 minutes. Rating: NNN
Where to watch: iTunes
What do you do when your horror franchise only has one idea and you killed off your best character in the first one? You turn back the clock, bring that character back to life and do it all over again.
The original Insidious was basically a stealth remake of Poltergeist slathered in director James Wan’s usual visual tropes. But it did introduce the helpful psychic Elise Rainier, played by Lin Shaye in a world-weary way that made that character feel richer and more interesting than anyone else in the picture.
Killed off in the first picture, Elise returned as a ghost in Insidious: Chapter 2, which was also directed by Wan and written by Leigh Whannell. Wan having since moved off to the Fast & Furious franchise, Whannell takes over the director’s chair for Chapter 3, a movie that does its best to do exactly the same things as its predecessors, from a slightly different angle.
Set “a few years before the Lambert haunting” (so 2007 maybe?), Chapter 3 invents a new ghost story but basically plays out the same beats as the first film. Once again, a California family – recently widowed Sean Brenner (Dermot Mulroney), teenaged daughter Quinn (Stefanie Scott) and younger son Alex (Tate Berney) – is stalked by an otherworldly threat. Once again, help comes from kindly Elise, who tells them about the angry ghosts who inhabit the strange netherworld she calls The Further. Also involved are amateur ghostbusters Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Whannell), who contribute some comic relief.
As before, the story plays out at half-speed, the better to set up long, creepy scenes of characters wandering around waiting to be shocked by a sudden manifestation of pure evil – or, you know, a really loud noise.
These scares are very nicely orchestrated, but they give the sequel the same structural flaw as the first Insidious, which is that the first two-thirds of the picture are much more tense than the last.
As a filmmaker, Whannell’s more interested in letting the cast breathe than Wan was, which makes sense given his own acting background, and he lets Mulroney and Shaye give their characters real substance in the moments before things go all shrieky. That’s nice, considering how thin the emotional stuff seemed in the first two pictures.
Whannell’s attempt to tie this narrative to the plot of the earlier films is unconvincing, but I don’t get the sense that overall cohesion is important to the Insidious franchise. Fans will be happy to see their favourite ghouls pop up it doesn’t really matter that they don’t actually do anything this time around. 97 minutes.
Don’t miss our feature with Leigh Whannell and Lin Shaye here.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
