The horror flick series Insidious has now reached its third outing. Aberdeen Voice’s Andrew Watson reviews Chapter 3, a prequel to the first two films.
Not many people came to view this supernatural chiller at Vue on Shiprow for Saturday lunchtime’s showing, the film having being released only the previous day.
You can see why, in a way. Though sometimes genuinely scary, it could be frustratingly hackneyed.
Anyway, single father Sean Brenner (Dermot Mulroney) juggles work and two kids to feed. His eldest, Quinn, it seems, while trying to be a mother to her younger brother (Tate Berney), harbours ambitions as an actress.
The stresses of this perceivably mould her into an introvert.
The film opens with her seeking advice from medium, Lin Shaye, who reprises her role as Elise Rainier from the previous two films. Quinn’s mother has passed recently and Quinn wants guidance.
Though Elise has long quit her professional capacity doing psychic readings, she agrees just this one more time.
Perturbed by the seemingly negative energies in the room, having sought Quinn’s mother in the spirit world, she warns the teenager to cease her yearning. She says if you call out one dead person, others hear, too.
Surprise, surprise, it wouldn’t be an hour or two sat in the screening if this advice was heeded. There’s an innocent game of knock-and-response on the wall splitting Quinn and her next door neighbour.
Only he’s not even there. It all kicks off from there, really.
Gradually these incidents escalate; hospitalising her, breaking her legs, and damaging her neck. Soon it’s not just a fight of the physical, as events spiral out of control, so much so, that her own soul is at stake.
Elise is once again persuaded to help, and even online house haunting bloggers are enlisted. Together the combine towards the film’s resolution.
From this bit onwards it all gets a bit corny. Psychic doing battle with evil spirits. Mortal woman tossing inconceivably evil, malignant and powerful forces with just a shove. Saving the day in The Matrix was more believable.
The saccharine ending, however, was thankfully tempered with, if not reality, some semblance of where the story goes from thereon.
If you were largely unimpressed with the hackneyed horror or corny combat, at the very least the story arc, if you’ve watched the previous two, keeps you at least a little bit interested and mildly curious.