Being Film #9 for Hooptober 2024
What do you do when there’s no more story to tell? Go back to the beginning, of course, and that’s where Leigh Whannell heads for his directorial debut in Insidious: Chapter 3. It’s clear from the start where Whannell’s heart lies wit regards to his characters, and if that means we get a somewhat thin story that basically equates to “girl haunted by malevolent ghost” that relies more on jump scares than nay other entry in the series thus far, it’s okay because what we’re turning in for is something we weren’t expecting: the transformation of Elise Rainier into a superhero.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: A few years before the start of the first film, young Quinn Brenner reaches out to Elise Rainier, attempting to contract her recently deceased mother. Elise has given up the psychic business for…”reasons” but reluctantly tries to make contact, noting that Quinn has tried and failed on her own to speak to the dead. Whoops! Turns out the key phrase uttered in this entry in the franchise is “when you call out to one of the dead, they ALL hear it.” And in this case a spooky old man who can’t breathe heard it, and wants Quinn’s life force for himself. Will Elise pull herself out of her rut and return to the work of The Further? Are Specs and Tucker phonies? Did people really wear Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe shirts? Doubtful, but you get to see Lin Shaye drop kick a spirit, so it’s all good in the end!
I’ve liked every entry in the Insidious series so far, but here you can clearly see Whannell is more invested in the Elise storyline than the Quinn Brenner one. Dermot Mulroney is so thinly drawn he’s basically transparent, and I can’t remember anything about the young son except they used him as a false gag that recalls the comatose Dalton from the first film. Grace and Harry, the Brenner’s neighbors are almost stereotyped into offensiveness, and for some reason there’s a best friend and a puppy-faced love interest for Quinn that completely disappear after two scenes. It’s the first time you feel the characters are simply there to drive plot forward or – worse – add some color to an otherwise bland story.
And yet.
And yet, because it’s where Whannell really wants to be, the story of Elise and why she’s stopped doing her work and how she gets involved with Specs and Tucker is so rich, inviting and fun I can’t help but enjoy the film. The arc here is how we get to Elise the badass we see in the first film, and to get there Chapter 3 has to find her at her darkest. There are more than a few genuinely creepy moments, such as when she follows a trail of stained black footprints down to her basement room and find the footprints stop, only to reveal them going up a wall, leading to one of the best scares in the film. Later in The Further we not only get the great aforementioned dropkick of the main baddie, but we also get a visual that HAD to play into Wan’s years-later (and delightfully demented) Malignant. It’s a rushed but exciting climax that wraps everything up pretty nicely and not only nods to Casablanca’s famous ending, as Elise walks arm in arm down a street with Specs and Tucker as they decide to form a partnership, it’s also sets up a little bit of mythology around Elise’s relationship with the old woman who ***spoiler*** ultimately kills her while possessing Josh in the first film’s twist ending.
There’s another quick twist here as well, as we see the return (though it’s the first appearance in the series’s chronology) of the fire faced demon that plagued the Lamberts. Specs and Tucker are enjoyable as always (I really like Tucker’s mohawk) and from a technical perceptive Whannell’s direction is solid, if a little too reliant on the same jump scare tactic time after time. In the end Insidious: Chapter 3 is fine if slightly underwhelming, and I’m slightly wary going into the fourth entry next.
Cinema Dual 
Leave a comment