Review: Insidious: The Last Key

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Unless your name is George Romero, horror movie series rarely pay off the longer they go on. There have been numerous great horror pictures that have been bogged down with lousy, unnecessary sequels. "Insidious" has long since run out of inspiration. The first film in the series - directed by James Wan - was frightening and inventive. The three films that have followed in its wake, not so much.

That being said, "The Last Key" isn't as much of a slog as the second and third entries in this series, and this is mostly due to the fact that Lin Shaye - portraying, once again, psychic Elise Rainier - is the lead in the film. This is a wise choice. Shaye has long been one of the more interesting elements of the "Insidious" series, although I'm not sure this necessitated a backstory for her character.

The movie opens in New Mexico in the early 1950s as Elise is a young girl living in a very haunted house with her younger brother, kindhearted mother and nasty, abusive father, who constantly punishes Elise for her extrasensory talents. In her teens, Elise runs away from home, leaving behind her young brother.

Most of the film is set in 2010 slightly before the events of the original "Insidious" film. Elise and her two cohorts - Specs (played by screenwriter Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) - are called to investigate Elise's childhood home, where a new owner - who's a little fishy himself - is complaining of poltergeists. Once there, she runs into her long estranged brother and his two daughters, and some familial drama is blended with the various jump scares that the picture liberally employs.

I'll say this for director Adam Robitel - there are a few spooky scenes here, especially an early one involving two kids in a dark room and a whistle. Many of the film's scenes take place in the dark and the filmmakers make good use of it. Unfortunately, they also - as I previously mentioned - fall back on the generic horror trope of the jump scare. This is, of course, when a camera wanders seemingly aimlessly around a room, at first spotting nothing, and then throwing something (a creepy face, a flash of a quickly moving ghost) into the frame. It's a cheap tactic that occasionally elicits the response for which it is seeking, but it doesn't make it any cheaper or less imaginative.

The picture mostly belongs to Shaye, who appears to be having a good time in this series. She's often a delight to watch and Whannell and Sampson make for decent sidekicks - although a joke they continuously repeat regarding this becomes tired quickly. "The Last Key" is mostly a generic horror sequel. It has a few scares and a laugh or two, but the most promising element of the entire endeavor is the use of the word "last" in the title.