Share. Elise Doesn’t Live Here Anymore ... Elise Doesn’t Live Here Anymore ...
Let’s be honest: there’s no release date that inspires less confidence than the first weekend of January, which has recently given us such horror classics as The Forest, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Texas Chainsaw 3D and The Devil Inside. Yeesh.
So compared to that crop of… let’s just call it “crop”… Insidious: The Last Key is a fairly adequate supernatural horror thriller, with a few decent scares and another great turn by Lin Shaye as the unassuming but deeply heroic ghostbuster Elise Rainier. But compared to all the other films in the Insidious series, and to other horror films in general, it’s clearly a bit of a letdown.
Insidious: The Last Key is the fourth film in the franchise, and the second prequel in a row. The previous entry, Insidious: Chapter 3, revealed how Elise met her comic relief sidekicks Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), and the new film - which isn’t called a “chapter”, a fact which already implies that this is more like a footnote - is all about their first major adventure as an official team.
Elise has only just moved in with her kooky apprentices, but right after they wackily screw up her chandelier (these are the jokes), she gets a portentous phone call from a man who wants her to exorcise his haunted house. The only problem is, it’s the house where Elise grew up as an abused child, and to confront the demon who lives there - a creepy beast with old-timey keys for fingers - she’ll also have to confront her own tortured past.
Exit Theatre Mode
One of the problems with movies about ghost hunters is that they’re always stepping into the lives of other people, and they aren’t always personally connected to the monsters that they fight. Insidious: The Last Key tries to solve that little conundrum but actually goes too far in the other direction. Most of the other characters in the film, including the new owner of the house, Ted Garza (Kirk Acevedo), are egregiously underdeveloped. They’re either related to Elise, so we’re supposed to care about them, or they’re not, so we don't.
It’s hard to feel suspense for people we don’t know much about, and Insidious: The Last Key compounds that lack of suspense by being yet another prequel. So the only characters we’re invested in - Elise, Specs and Tucker - already have their futures set in stone. Anyone who cares enough to see Insidious: The Last Key probably also cared enough to see the other hit films in this series, so their ending is a foregone conclusion. And foregone conclusions are rarely scary.
Exit Theatre Mode
Still, just when you think you know exactly where Insidious: The Last Key is going to go, Leigh Whannell’s screenplay does manage to throw in a clever new jump scare, and director Adam Robitel knows how to film them well enough to keep the film eerie and brisk. It’s always a pleasure to see Lin Shaye carry a whole movie, and she once again proves why she’s the Insidious franchise’s true MVP. #Elise4Ever
But again, it’s been two prequels in a row now, and it officially feels like the Insidious movies are stalling for time. The Last Key may be somewhat engaging but it’s also sloppy and doesn’t amount to much, when all is said and done, except maybe - and only maybe - to insidiously (ha!) lay the foundation for a new addition to this franchise in the future.
Insidious: The Last Key Dr. Elise Rainier faces her most fearsome and personal haunting yet: in her own family home. Get Deal
Director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell did quite a lot of things right in 2010’s shamelessly entertaining paranormal thriller, “Insidious.” But as far as franchise-building goes, they made one crucial error: killing off the film’s most memorable character, the unflappably empathetic sexagenarian parapsychologist Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). For the first sequel, “Chapter 2,” they brought her back in spectral form, and for 2015’s Whannell-directed “Chapter 3,” they made even more room for her by approaching the film as a prequel. A direct sequel to that prequel, “Insidious: The Last Key” finally gives Elise the complete spotlight, and in doing so turns her into something of an action hero, complete with an origin story. Despite the indomitable Shaye’s best efforts, however, new director Adam Robitel is rarely successful in shaking the cobwebs off this increasingly creaky franchise: “The Last Key” is wildly uneven, confused and confusing, and it appears to leave the “Insidious” saga written into a corner yet again.
Largely taking place in 2010, shortly before the events of the first film, “The Last Key” makes ample time for flashbacks, beginning with a 1950s-set prologue depicting Elise’s very unhappy childhood. The daughter of a prison warden, the grade school-aged Elise (Ava Kolker) lives in a creaky house in the shadow of a New Mexico penitentiary, and her budding paranormal gifts are already drawing the curiosity of her skittish younger brother Christian (Pierce Pope) and the ire of her abusive, ghoulish father Gerald (Josh Stewart). In a well-staged early setpiece, Elise finds herself trapped in her house’s basement at night, beckoned by a child’s voice to unlock a mysterious red door, which she does with tragic consequences.
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Back in the present day, Elise receives a call from the new owner of her childhood home, who has been experiencing strange phenomena of his own. Initially reluctant to revisit her traumatic past, she quickly relents, and heads back to small-town New Mexico with her two ghostbuster-wannabe sidekicks Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) in tow. Her new client (Kirk Acevedo) bears a noticeable resemblance to her father – he also walks with a Neanderthal’s gait, and does not appear to have done laundry in a fortnight – and Elise’s team has scarcely set up shop in the house before various apparitions begin to literally crawl out of the woodwork. Back in town, Elise runs into her now-grown brother (Bruce Davison) and his two adult daughters (Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke). Christian blames Elise for abandoning him when she was 16 – Hana Hayes plays the teenage Elise in flashbacks – and storms off, but it isn’t long before he and his progeny end up back at the haunted old house as well.
Robitel has a steady craftsman’s grasp of the rhythms that make a classic Blumhouse jump scare, but he struggles with the element of surprise; the setups to the scares are so predictable, the question is never if a demon will appear in a particular frame, but simply how many seconds the shot will be held until it does. Very little of the tension-breaking comedy comes off – a half-baked comic subplot involving Specs and Tucker’s attempts to woo Elise’s nieces is cringe-worthy – and the director will sometimes cut away to ominously emphasized objects that turn out to have no significance at all. But to be fair, the script doesn’t make things easy for him. At roughly the midway point, “The Last Key” makes its boldest gambit, halfway pivoting away from the series’ stock paranormal hauntings to horror of a different, if no more novel, variety. The revelation that occurs makes little sense in light of things that have happened literally minutes earlier, and when the film begins to lapse into surreal dream logic in the final stretch, it feels less like a conscious choice than an attempt to avoid accounting for loose ends.
If the film ties together at all, it’s mostly due to Shaye’s undeniable appeal. A veteran character actress, Shaye clearly knows how rare it is to have a role like this at 74, and she sinks her teeth into every scene. Given a line like “My presence draws the spirits out of their dark little corners,” Shaye is too respectful of her character to deliver it with a wink, but nor does she invest it with the sort of bug-eyed intensity that would make it ridiculous. Watching as the simultaneously vulnerable and fearless Elise throws herself into one perilous entanglement after another, you have to tip your hat to the “Insidious” brain trust for giving the character the starring role, but as the franchise’s chronology drifts ever closer to where it all started, it’s sadly clear that the character has nowhere else to go.
The first weekend of 2018 will see one new wide release in North America with Universal’s “Insidious: The Last Key” challenging potent holdovers “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”
The fourth film in the “Insidious” franchise is the studio’s latest collaboration with Blumhouse Productions, which delivered a trio of low-cost horror hits last year with “Split,” “Get Out,” and “Happy Death Day.” “Insidious: The Last Key” will launch on Friday at about 3,000 domestic locations with tracking indicating an opening in the $15 million to $18 million range, with younger audiences — particularly women — showing the strongest interest in the film.
That’s likely to place “The Last Key” in third behind the fourth weekend of Disney’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and the third weekend of Sony’s “Jumanji,” which will probably be battling for first with around $28 million to $30 million each. “The Last Jedi” has grossed $531.5 million domestically in its first 18 days while “Jumanji” has totaled $185 million in 13 days. Fox’s third weekend of “The Greatest Showman” will likely come in fourth with around $11 million, followed by Universal’s third weekend of “Pitch Perfect 3.”
Additionally, STXfilms is expanding its Jessica Chastain poker drama “Molly’s Game” on Friday from its current 271 sites to 1,608 locations amid prospects for a $6 million to $8 million weekend. The film, Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, has grossed a respectable $6.5 million in its first nine days. Reviews have been positive with an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. STXfilms bought the U.S. and Chinese rights to the project, produced by Mark Gordon, for $9 million.
The “Insidious” franchise dates back to 2010 with “Insidious,” followed by “Insidious: Chapter 2” in 2013 and “Insidious: Chapter 3” in 2015. The three films have grossed a combined $357 million worldwide.
The first two movies starred Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne as a couple whose son mysteriously enters a comatose state and becomes a vessel for ghosts. The third pic was a prequel to the haunting of the family in the first two films, and centered on a girl possessed by a demon.
Lin Shaye, who has been in all three films, returns in “Insidious: The Last Key” as a parapsychologist whose haunted childhood comes to threaten her family and home. It follows the events in “Insidious: Chapter 3.”
The film is directed by Adam Robitel from a script by co-creator Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the first three movies and directed “Insidious: Chapter 3.” It’s produced by “Insidious” regulars Jason Blum, Oren Peli, and co-creator James Wan.
Shaye is joined in the cast by Angus Sampson, Whannell, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Kirk Acevedo, Javier Botet, Bruce Davison, Spencer Locke, Tessa Ferrer, Ava Kolker, and Marcus Henderson. Sony Pictures is distributing the film internationally.
