A Brief History
On January 5, 2018, the fourth movie in the Insidious horror movie series makes its opening across the US, bringing the familiar character, ghost buster Elise Rainier, back into play in a battle against evil. The film is an absolute must see for Insidious fans, but can easily stand on its own for those unfamiliar with the movie franchise.
Digging Deeper
Without giving away spoilers, suffice to say the movie reveals the background of our heroine, from her time as a young girl with the dubious “gift” of being able to see and communicate with ghosts. Smoothly going back and forth between the present and the past, the film ties both together logically and skillfully. Abject horror is tempered by comedic relief by the assistants of Elise, Tucker and Specs. The trio work together as paranormal investigators.
Just when you think the plot is predictable, it throws you a curve into melding real live evil people and supernatural entities, keeping you on your toes to see which comes next. Complete with jump scares and fake you out non-jump scares, the film is highly entertaining.
Acting, directing, and cinematography are all good, so if we have any criticism at all it would be about the depiction of Christian Rainier as an adult seeming to be way too old to logically be the father of his 2 lovely young daughters, and would be better portrayed as the girls’ grandfather. On the other hand, in real life the actor, Bruce Davison, playing Christian is only 71 to the 29 and 26 year old (real life aged) daughters. In the movie, Christian seems older than 71 and the girls seem like 18 to 20 year olds. Nevertheless, this criticism is a really minor point, as it was not overly distracting during our experience watching this outstanding horror film.
As far as ghost movies go, the Insidious franchise is one of the better series of films, and The Last Key is certainly right up there with the others as far as providing the proper balance of tension, jump scares, evil, good, and scary people and ghosts. We can honestly say this is the scariest movie of the year we have seen so far! (It is also the first scary movie of 2018 we’ve seen.) Some other critics have been lukewarm about the film, but the test audience reaction at our viewing indicated thorough enjoyment of the movie. The laughs and gasps were at the appropriate times, and more importantly we liked the film.
Start your movie New Year off right and see Insidious: The Last Key. Just don’t see it alone!
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see the film’s official site.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube.
