INSIDIOUS LACKING IN INVENTION
Standard girl-in-peril flick does unremarkable job filling the blanks
INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3
★★ ½
Starring: Stefanie Scott, Dermot Mulroney
Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Running time: 97 minutes
It’s odd, in an age when sequels like to avoid numerals — is Terminator Genisys No. 5 in the series or the first in a rebooted storyline? — that Insidious goes with the old-school moniker Chapter 3. It’s also incorrect, since this one’s actually a prequel, set a few years before the Lambert Haunting. Insidious: Prologue would be a better title.
But don’t fret if you’re unfamiliar with the Lambert affair, or if you’ve forgotten it since the first Insidious landed in 2010. All you really need to know is spelled out in the first scene by psychic Elise Rainier: “If you call out to one of the dead, all of them can hear you.” That includes any nasty ones who might want to possess you.
Elise is played by Lin Shaye, familiar from the other Insidious movies and from such 1980s horrors as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters and Critters 2. Seems she got into the genre and never looked back — or under the bed, inside a closet or in a bathroom mirror.
The gal on the receiving end of the advice is Quinn Brenner, played by Stefanie Scott. She’s a teenager whose mom has recently died and who really wants to have a few more words. She almost gets to see her the hard way when a car accident puts her in a coma, but she recovers from that and now only has to contend with her legs in casts. Unfortunately, this is going to make getting away from evil spirits that much trickier.
Insidious: Chapter 3 sees writer Leigh Whannell take over directing duties from James Wan, who was too busy on Furious Seven to do this one but returns to the genre next year with the cumbersomely named The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist. Whannell also pops up onscreen as one half of Tucker & Specs, a ghost-busting duo familiar to fans of the series, and the best, most inventive part of this chapter.
Pity they don’t show up sooner. For most of its 97 minutes, Chapter 3 is your standard girl- in-peril movie. There’s a crazy old neighbour who says creepy things, a single dad (Dermot Mulroney) who slowly comes around to the notion that maybe his daughter is suffering from more than just bad dreams, and a demon that leaves behind sludgy footprints as though it were cleaning up an oil spill in the hereafter.
Scott is fine in the role, and the film’s minimal score has the effect of making the requisite jump-scares that much jumpier and scarier. But she’s not getting much help from the rest of the cast. Best friend Maggie (Hayley Kiyoko), brother Alex (Tate Berney) and boyfriend-hopeful Hector (Ashton Moio) come and go as the script requires, but don’t hang around long enough to make much of an impact. The same can’t be said for the ghostly intruder, however.
Chapter 3 will no doubt resonate with Insidious fans who have been wanting to know how it all began. For myself, when it comes to prologues, I’m still holding out for the backstory on Jaws and the long-rumoured Keyser Söze: The Early Years.