Being Film #10 for Hooptober 2024
I’m not going to try and change your mind and say that Insidious: The Last Key is a great movie. The fourth entry in a franchise series is rarely its best. But what I will submit to you is this: by consistently changing up the main baddie (this one has a particularly cool look), by staying further away from mythologizing the universe and – once again – putting the focus on Elise Rainier and her own history, we get a better than I expected entry that has a few deliciously creepy moments, an overall story focusing on a mystery to change up the more straight-up horror elements, and an ending that will finally bring us back to what’s going on with Lambert family if that’s more your thing.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Elise Rainier and he spectral spooking buddies Specs and Tucker get a call from a desperate man named Ted Garza who needs their help dealing with the evil spirits plaguing the home he purchased. The catch? It’s Elise’s childhood home in New Mexico, and the things that happened there are plenty and plenty evil. The trio travel to unlock what is plaguing Garza, to discover the family she left behind and understand just what evil was permeating the Rainier home all that time. Do you think the fact the house was next to a state penitentiary might have anything to do with it? I don’t know, because it’s barely mentioned after one establishing scene! Do you think Ted Garza is everything he claims to be? Doubtful!
With a story and script by Leigh Whannell keeping the original team involved, this time the directing reins are handed to Adam Robitel, who a few years later would go onto his own horror fame with the Escape Room series. The directing is serviceable if even more unassuming and without any kind of distinctive voice. Things just kind of happen, and the ending in particular feels like a rush to wrap up in a set amount of time before the audience gets fidgety.
That’s not to say the film doesn’t work, though. The structure of using Elise’s flashbacks to both flesh her character out further as well as provide new context to the story by showing certain scenes multiple times works great, and as far as scares are concerned there is an all-timer involving Elise going into a duct and finding a number of hidden suitcases that unravels a larger mystery and provides the biggest scare of the film. And in the main villain, a malevolent spirit that is trying to unlock all the red doors to let the beings from The Further access to our works has a fantastic look. Those keys for fingers aren’t just for show, and it’s a great visual to see just how they’re used and what they do.
I just wish the script were a little tighter – you can sense Whannell running on fumes at this point with the story. There’s a whistle set up earlier in the film you just KNOW is going to be the Chekov’s gun in the film’s climax, and rather than being bumbling comedic relief (though I’ll go to bat for the joke “She’s psychic, we’re sidekick.”) Specs and Tucker are just plain creepy. I guess they’ve never seen attractive girls before, because I don’t know how else to describe their ridiculous behavior around Elise’s recently discovered nieces. The conflict with her brother who she abandoned when she ran away from home (played by Bruce Davison as an adult) is utterly wasted, shoved away and resolved with a single conversation.
None of this spoils Insidious: The Last Key for me; I still really like the general mystery, the plot twist, and anything that involves bulking up Lin Shaye’s phenomenal performance as the lead. I just saw potential here that could have made this fly instead of feeling like a rush to get IP locked in people’s minds. With one more “official” entry to go (I know they’re making a spinoff), it’s close to the end for my time with Insidious.
Cinema Dual 
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