Review: Insidious Chapter 3

Story:

Quinn’s trying to communicate with her dead mother and goes to a psychic Elise who is trying to stay away from the whole contacting the dead thing because it’s dangerous. Elise tells her not to make contact because when you talk to one of the dead all of them can hear you. Predictably she doesn’t listen and bad things start happening.

Review:

This is the third movie in the series and usually by this point in a series (horror movies in particular) the movies are terrible. It’s just a giant cash in and not much thought or effort goes in to making the movie it’s own unique thing.
Insidious Chapter three manages to escape that trend by being a prequel and showing the events leading to the first movie.
Before I saw this one I always got Insidious and Sinister mixed up. Both have one word titles that mean something bad and they were both pretty forgettable. Now I know which one is which because of Elise. The second Insidious was bad and even more forgettable than the first one.
Insidious Chapter three may not have the best story, I think it falls apart a bit at the end, but it’s a good horror movie. It’s much scarier than the first or second containing not just jump scares but terrifying moments with great tension.
A lot of these moments happen when Quinn is injured and confined to her bed. She’s unable to escape and has to wait for what this ghost, that you can see is in the room, is going to do next. They do the smart thing and keep the ghost out of sight for most of the movie. We mostly just see the ghost’s feet as she ends up on the floor a lot. When we do see the ghost clearly it’s still quite creepy and doesn’t diminish it as much as seeing other monsters usually do.
This time when they enter the further (it’s like the after life or where you go when you’re dreaming, it’s not clear exactly) it’s not as bad as the first movie where it stopped being scary. That’s probably because it’s Elise entering this time.
This is more Elise’s story and Quinn gets forgotten by the end of the movie. They should have just had her be the main character from the beginning. Her struggle to overcome her fears of what will happen if she’s goes back to the ghost hunting business are compelling. And while Quinn’s struggle with the death of her mother and letting go may be equally compelling she’s not in the other two movies.
By the end Quinn is relegated to damsel in distress and the only saving grace is that it’s a woman who’s doing the rescuing. She’s surrounded by a lot of men but she’s the one in charge.
Having the main character be injured for the majority of the movie and unable to move isn’t something we see a lot. It adds to the terror because she can’t get away even if she wants to.
The ghost is unseen until the end. There are a lot of shots of his feet and him being in darkness. Even when you do see him clearly he remains scary.
I hope they continue on from this movie for the next one, if they’re doing a next one, so we get to see more Elise and how they started their company.

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