Film Review: Insidious: The Last Key

"I've Faced Many Evil's In My Life. This One Is Different Though..."

Acting as the latest entry within the ongoing Blumhouse Production line of horror releases, Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth and supposedly final picture within the rather drawn out Insidious franchise, is the first big screen jump-fest to hit multiplexes this year, and whilst there is a lack of consideration, particularly from myself, in regards to why yet another sequel is necessary to a franchise which suffers from a bruising sense of unmemorability, aside from its' rather creepy first entry back in 2010, The Last Key is a somewhat acceptable, time-passing affair. Directed by horror stalwart Adam Robitel, whose previous releases in the form of The Taking of Deborah Logan and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension acts as confident evidence for his directorial appointment, The Last Key primarily focuses on Lin Shaye's psychic ghost hunter, Elise Rainier, as she returns to face the fears of her childhood in order to help Kirk Acevedo's Ted Garza who calls for aid after experiencing strange hauntings within the house Rainier and her long lost brother grew up in under the watchful eye of their monstrous father. 

Suffering in a way which most contemporary horror sequels, prequels and spin-offs ultimately do by feeling just a little bit worse for wear in terms of the freshness of the narrative and overall surprise factor, Robitel's movie ironically begins in impressive fashion, heading further back in time to explore Rainier's childhood in order to lay the groundwork for the story ahead, and with two mightily timed jump scares to start off proceedings, The Last Key was in danger of becoming much better than one might have expected. Unfortunately, yet not exactly surprisingly, however, the swift move back to the somewhat present day then brings about the middling return to a horror blueprint which covers everything from screaming dead entities to an overkill sensibility regarding the use of cliched horror tropes, tropes which become tiring as they finalise by simply resorting each and every time to the cattle prod horror cinema audiences seem to lap up. With comedy which doesn't always work coming from the Chuckle Brothers of horror in the form of Rainier's bumbling assistants and a concluding reveal which is unsurprising and hokey, The Last Key is pretty much your substandard horror sequel, but for the impressive first ten minutes, a committed performance from Shaye and a sense that finally the series has been put to bed, Robitel's movie isn't a classic but it at least works in a audience pleasing kind of fashion which for many, is all that you need. 

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

"I Should Have Stayed At Mum's..."

When it comes to a juggernaut of a release such as Spectre, there is always a few films that attempt to grab the minorities attention and attempt to sway them away from Mr Bond and his exploding watch. Unfortunately for those who part of such a minority, one of the few films release side-by-side Spectre this week is Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, the newest and supposedly last incarnation of the well-worn found footage franchise that began all the way back in in 2009 with Paranormal Activity, which to be fair was rather creepy and overtly intelligent, satisfyingly so considering its' tightrope budget was well and truly recuperated around a million times over by audiences via word of mouth and critical praise rather than overblown advertisements and propaganda. Once the first film was seen as a highly effective money-making scheme, producers decided to repeat the process over and over and over again with The Ghost Dimension proving to be the final nail in the coffin of the original which in effect has been completely tarnished by the reputation of its' successors. 

Paranormal Activity 2? Pants. Activity 3? Bit better. Activity 4? Real pants. The Marked Ones? Completely pointless. Am I missing anything? Do I care? No. Neither seemingly do the film-makers of The Ghost Dimension who seem not to realise that the overly boring setup of found footage films nowadays is really starting to become rather grating with The Ghost Dimension ticking all of the many boxes of what you expect with such a movie. People filming the house? Check. Cleaning the lens? Check. Wobbly, shaky, running scenes? Check. Camera catching no-so-creepy entity and then people looking at it again therefore repeating the same scene twice just so our so called cast can catch up with stuff we have already seen? Check. Get the picture? The one redeeming feature of The Ghost Dimension is that it puts to bed the overly tedious and overstretched plot-lines that apparently connects all of the Paranormal series, something of which I couldn't care less about but does make me happy that we will never see any shaky-cam captures of the demonic and stupidly named Toby ever again. 

Overall Score: 2/10 

Film Review: Insidious: Chapter Three

Alone In The Dark

Looking back at the career of Leigh Whannell so far, there is a solid enough amount of evidence to argue that the hugely annoying norm of "cattle-prod" cinema that infests our cinemas and classes itself as "horror" nowadays is essentially pretty much his own doing. Bit harsh, yeah, but with writing credits that include the Saw series, Dead Silence, and the first two Insidious movies manifesting from his own mind, I think I have a partial leg to stand on. Maybe not, but hey, when you delve a bit deeper and look at his constant affiliation with James Wan, the argument gets a tiny bit stronger when we see The Conjuring and Annabelle added to that list. The plot thickens. But enough of my hatred anyhow, as now we have Insidious Chapter 3, a new film in the series of "horror" flicks that should  never have got past the first film, which in all honesty I did kind of actually enjoy but was then subsequently angered by the turgid sequel that swiftly followed. But now we have a prequel to the first film once again featuring Lin Shaye who reprises her role as eerie ghost whisperer, Elise Rainier, but the real question is, how much of a boring, stinker of a film can it possibly be? Well to be honest, its' kinda spooky. 

When teenager Quinn (Stefanie Scott) disregards all previous rules of horror flicks and attempts to contact her dead mother, she inadvertently makes contact with a creepy, seemingly asthmatic demon who seeks to bring her to the depths of hell or wherever that place is that looks a lot like the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, without the dancing dwarf of course. Enter Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) who is subsequently tasked with preventing such evil deeds from occurring whilst avoiding her own fate of death from the rip-off  Jennet Humfyre, i.e. the Woman in Black. Even in the plot synopsis you can see how many cliches, rip-offs, and stolen scenes are used to lesser effect within Insidious Chapter 3, with elements of The Exorcist, Poltergeist, and The Shining all appearing in some shape of form during its' 90 minute runtime, but there were certain moments in which it proper freaked me out and where the use of a cattle-prod was put to one side for the time being, and for that I can safely say, was particularly pleasing to see. It may not have been as good as the first, but Insidious Chapter 3 is leagues better than its' predecessor making it a solid, if rather similar, entry into the horror canon. 

Overall Score: 5/10