Wolf Man

Daddyshack

Wolf Man
Directed by Leigh Whannell
USA 2025
Universal Pictures/Blumhouse
UK Cinema Release Print.

Wolf Man is yet another attempt to reboot one of the classic Universal horror properties of the 1930s and 40s. Something which I feel the company has been very successful with on a creative level for the last ten years or so but, alas, the box office mostly tells a different story. Now I had high hopes for this latest take on The Wolfman (the original 1941 version plus the remake reviewed by me here) because this director had made a very interesting spin on The Invisible Man not so long ago (reviewed here) but two things made me drastically lower my expectations.

Firstly, from the look of the trailer, the new wolfman really isn’t all that hairy and, yeah, he really isn’t in the film either, truth be told. Secondly, the film has been getting bad reviews so far (apart from some people I overheard leaving the cinema who absolutely loved it... it wasn’t a well attended screening but you could hear a pin drop in that room for the majority of the movie) and I wasn’t expecting too much by the time I walked down to my local Cineworld to see it. As it turns out, though, this movie had me gripped from pretty much the start. There are a few minor problems such as the pacing (which I’ll get to in a minute) but all in all I was absolutely under the spell of the film, it has to be said.

Now, it also has to be said, if you are going to go in there expecting a loving homage to the original Universal monsters movie then you are going to be somewhat let down. There are no Maria Ouspenskaya references. There are no Lawrence Talbot jokes... not even his iconic cane is in this one (even though that’s reared its silver head a few times in movies in recent years). There is one small reference to legendary Universal monster make-up man Jack Pearce, who of course did the iconic make up on the 1941 original and, possibly one other small reference to that movie which I’ll get to in a little while. So don’t go in expecting something which includes the original because, this movie isn’t it.

It is, however, well shot, beautifully framed in places, all done with practical effects other than CGI (which I honestly didn’t notice so, yeah, it looks great) and the acting is strong... although a little out of kilter...

Okay, a family consisting of Blake (played by Christopher Abbott), his wife Charlotte (played by Julia Garner) and their young daughter Ginger (played by Matilda Firth) - an obvious Ginger Snaps reference - go to clear out a shack in a remote forest location after Blake’s dad is finally, after many years, declared dead. They then confront, head on, the werewolf legend of the area (although I don’t think it’s ever once referred to as a werewolf) and they have to survive to the end of the movie if they can (it’s easy to guess who does, from not very far in).

Now, there’s all the clichés set up such as Ginger being very much a daddy’s girl, leaving the movie to bring in the idea that she bonds more with the mother during the trauma of the story... and the thing about Blake’s father giving him a very strict upbringing which he tries to never spill down onto his daughter, which gets challenged later on. The film starts with a really great, somewhat extended cold opening of the young Blake and his father confronting a creature in the woods and then jumping 30 years forward to the present, where the first twenty or so minutes sets up the stuff I’ve outlined in the sentence before. And then a curious thing happens where, much like a modern Patricia Cornwell novel, the whole rest of the movie takes place in just a small period of time amounting to hours rather than days.

So it’s all set in the night of the evening the family arrive at the father’s old house. Everything therefore feels a little compressed and a slight weakness of the film means it all feels rushed and the various, calamitous story beats and the characters’ reactions to them will almost certainly prompt an audience response of... “well that escalated quickly”. 

 The other thing which seems a little odd is Julia Garner’s performance as the mother. She’s playing the character in a very... well, muffled way. Everything is very understated and almost emotionless. It’s good though in the fact that she isn’t completely going insane, externally at least, to the events that follow and it serves the purpose of giving the ‘survival mode’ elements of the characters a certain credibility... but I think people may find it odd (even though it’s an excellent performance, just an unconventional choice).

However, the film is certainly fast and furious and has some really nice ideas. Such as the sound and vision moments from the point of view of the main werewolf character as the changes take place in his body... not being able to understand the rest of the family (nor they him) and with a wonderful visual change which, amazingly, the director was able to achieve in camera on set (the film switches seamlessly within the same shot as the camera moves to give some quite innovative visual viewpoint changes done in real time). Added to this we have some revved up sound design which really helps maintain the sense of urgency and fright in the movie and, to top it off, a very loud and cacophonous score by Benjamin Wallfisch which is absolutely terrifying in its own right and, man am I angry this thing has not been given a proper CD release (I don’t go with buying digital air so it means I won’t get to listen to it away fro the movie at any point... unless some bright spark decides to put an isolated score on the Blu Ray).

So, yeah, all I can say is, even though I’m a big admirer of the original Universal monster movies, I really loved this much different take on the idea and, if people can get over their expectations and let their guard down on that stuff, I think they will have a pretty good time of it. Oh, and that one other thing it possibly has in common with the original 1941 production? Well, despite its reliance on the full moon, the original doesn’t contain one shot of the moon in it, if memory serves and, unless I missed it somehow in this new version, this one doesn’t either (although it’s clearly on the poster so maybe I missed it)... which makes more sense since the lycanthropic state in this one is passed purely through a viral infection and not bound to changes between human and wolf like status on cycles of the moon like the original (once you’re a beast you stay a beast, in other words). But yeah, don’t take my word for it... go see Wolf Man, It needs some better word-of-mouth to combat the words of the critics, I fear.

Insidious - The Red Door

Further More

Insidious -
The Red Door
Directed by Patrick Wilson
Canada/USA  2023 Screen Gems
UK cinema release print

Okay, so despite the first movie in the series being yet another ‘inspired by but not owning up to it’ reworking of the Little Girl Lost episode of The Twilight Zone, I do quite like the Insidious movies and have been happy to go see each one as they hit the cinemas. So now we’re up to the fifth chapter in the ongoing series, Insidious - The Red Door. This one is mostly not written by Leigh Whannell as far as I can tell (the IMDB seems a bit conflicted with this information in a couple of different sections) but he does still do a cameo as his character from the previous movies in this, as does both his ghostbusting partner Angus Simpson and, in two big cameo spots, Lin Shaye... who I was hoping would have a much bigger role in it this time around.

This movie is set nine years after the events of the first film and features the main male lead Patrick Wilson (who also directed this installment as his debut behind the camera) as Josh and, now college aged but still played by the original actor who was a boy in the first couple of films, Ty Simpkins as his son Dalton (his brother is played by Andrew Astor, who also reprises his role for this movie). Then we have Rose Byrne back as Josh’s ‘now ex’ wife and a newcomer in the form of Dalton’s new college buddy/potential girlfriend played by Sinclair Daniel.

This one sees a rift has developed between father and son in the years since they were both hypnotised to forget their involvement and terrifying experiences in The Further, the parallel realm to this one which haunts them in both their corporeal forms and their astral explorer forms. Both are plagued by visions with their suppressed memories starting to break loose and manifest new horrors upon them... with the film following the two individually as they fail to connect in real life, until they are rebonded accidentally in the next ‘scary movie encounter’ in The Further, linking them right back to their earlier experiences.

And it’s an okay film. It’s not the best in the franchise for sure and, I think I find it somewhat lacking in terms of story more than anything else. Patrick Wilson proves himself a very good director, working with the material he’s been given and I was especially impressed by a scene where nothing much happens but the whirs and clicks of an old microfiche reader (I’ve never heard one make those sounds) are used to punctuate jump cuts as the camera is repositioned a little closer to him and his subject matter at each click.

And it’s got some good enough jump scares in the movie too. Once more, it’s all about what the audience sees and expects which dictates the way the camera points, often calling to attention differences in shots of familiar terrain. So the audience can see a door has been opened between shots where the character can’t for instance... or the presence of a man behind a truly contrived presentation of a classic memory game is getting closer each time Josh uncovers a panel of a set of windows. So, yeah, in some ways the film is predictable about when the scares are going to come... and how they’re going to come (I didn’t expect full on face vomiting in this one, for sure) but it doesn’t really stop the jumps being fairly successful and, with Joseph Bishara’s typical score to back up the film, it all works pretty well.

I have three main disappointments with the film though, which I’ll briefly elaborate here. One is that the endless array of scary set pieces don’t follow a particularly complex or interesting narrative. If you’ve seen the previous installments, you’ll know what’s going on and there’s not much story development in this one, it has to be said. So I did find it a kind of an empty bunch of scary moments in a bag, ultimately.

Secondly, after Lin Shaye’s character Elise’s death in the second one (plus her wonderful, much more leading roles in the two prequels), I was hoping she would be back in a big way. We know she’s in The Further (as this film reminds us) so I was hoping for a series of movies where she and her two ghostbusting co-workers would be working a horror mystery from each dimension, communicating through some kind of link. Instead, the three characters really are just cameos so... yeah... that was a shame.

Thirdly, there’s a truly great new character, an art teacher called Professor Armagan, played by Hiam Abbass. It’s set up like she’s going to be a new mentor character in place of the deceased Elise (or at least that's what it seemed like to me) and the actress herself has amazing screen presence in this role. Alas, both actress and character are wasted in here, in what amounts to just a couple of scenes. I think the writer should have done more with this character.

Other than those slight grumbles though, yeah, if you like the previous Insidious movies then Insidious - The Red Door should give you another good time at the cinema. As I type this, the news has come in that it’s beaten the new Indiana Jones movie (reviewed here) at the box office and, yeah, I think a lot of people (myself included) are in shock that Indy didn’t do a lot better. All I will say is that, despite there only being seven people in this screening (so I don’t know how it managed to snag the figures it has), I’m guessing that this one is appealing to a younger target audience than Mr. Jones. And, I suspect, that’s the generation that, rightly or wrongly, are much less frightened about going out and catching Covid from a cinema trip. So maybe those box office figures aren’t such a large surprise after all.

The Invisible Man (2020)

Now You See Me Too

The Invisible Man (2020)
2020 Australia/USA/Canada/UK
Directed by Leigh Whannell
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Mild spoilers.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell’s new version of Universal’s franchise based on The Invisible Man is, I’m sure surprising nobody and just like many of the Universal sequels, really nothing to do with H. G. Wells original novel. That being said, the two things which both Well’s source and this movie version have in common is a central antagonist that shares the same last name as the original, Griffin and, similarly, the idea that he is an antagonist rather than protagonist... unlike the majority of the six original Universal films, is also retained.

Given director Leigh Whannell’s track record, the man who made the absolutely brilliant but still prohibitedly expensive to buy on Blu Ray movie Upgrade (reviewed by me here but, honestly, nobody wants to be paying £24 for this) you would expect that this film would be pretty good and, I have to say... yes, it really is. If you’re happy that this isn’t the same character that you knew from the 1933 version, then you should have a good time with this.

This time around, the film has been pitched firmly, it seems to me, to support the ‘me too’ movement and, although the final scenes of the movie are as troubling as the overly black and white ‘your perceived judgement of a situation trumps the possible truth of the situation’ reality of real life at the moment, there’s enough at the climax to make the ambiguity of the end game of an abusive relationship feel very true and I think it’s an extra feather in the cap for Whannell that some of the audience are going to walk out of the film with conflicting ideas as to whether justice has been served here for any of the characters.

Elisabeth Moss is absolutely fantastic in the role of abused girlfriend Cecilia Kass and she does carry the film extraordinarily well, backed up by a good supporting cast of people like Aldis Hodge and Storm Reid. Also, the film is well shot and edited but where it really comes into its own is with the sound design. This combined with Benjamin Wallfisch’s terrifically jumpy score (alas, not available on CD, only as a stupid electronic download) are what provide the film with the most scares. The film in itself, has no really big ‘fright moments’ but, due to the use of sound and music, you still get some quite intense suspense sequences in this thing.

Okay, so two standout things for me.

That sound work I just mentioned really comes into its own when, after two weeks confined in her friend’s house, Cecilia tries to brave the outside world once more by walking outside for ten seconds or so. The tension of her inner intimidation by the big, scary outside is strengthened incredibly as she puts her first foot out the door and the sound design gets suddenly muted and echoey as it does things to her footsteps. A really nice touch.

The other thing I liked about this is the way they played with modern conventions of horror which, in a way, also mimicked things Universal were doing with the series back in the 1930s and 1940s, for different reasons. That is the modern horror movie thing of the camera turning around and looking at empty rooms as you wait to spot some little detail in the shot that you know is going to scare you. It’s certainly something they would, by necessity, do in the original films in order to show you the visible signs of an invisible person being in the room... as you wait to see a tell tale foot print or a breath of cold air or a door opening. Here, though, Whannell does this purely, it seemed to me, to have fun with the modern viewer expecting to see these things. He’ll similarly focus the camera on an empty room as Cecilia is trying to see if she’s alone or not but, brilliantly, quite often does nothing with it. In the most cases, there are no indications to show there is anyone there or not... and you certainly know about it when it all kicks off. This, of course, strengthens the mood of carefully prepared paranoia which perpetually permeates the movie and I think taking this approach, at this particular time in horror film history, was a good idea.

There are some small problems I had with the movie... apart from the UK print being censored by a few seconds, ensuring that any future Blu Ray purchase from me needs to be imported from the US.

One of those problems is it’s not really a horror film. The weird science aspect of the chemical potion which gave invisibility but turned ones brain against one as it stayed in your system is gone. Instead, the lead antagonist is an optical science specialist and he’s basically wearing a stealth suit... it’s not unlike the terribly stupid car in Pierce Brosnan’s sad misstep of a Bond movie Die Another Day (reviewed by me here).

The other thing was the way it telegraphs an obvious twist in the middle of the film, where Cecilia gets a visit from a certain attorney. It totally gives away a reveal from later in the movie and I was a little disappointed that this was so blatant. However, it does lead the way for the second ending of the story and the whole problematic issue of the ‘me too’ element of the film... so I guess it’s at least good that this ‘almost twist’ is still in here. The final scenes give the film an interesting lack of clarity which may spark of debate at some point in the future, I suspect. Certainly, by the end of the movie, I would be as scared of the main protagonist as I was of the main antagonist so... yeah, I’m sure I’ll get moaned at for suggesting the ending could be read in more than one way but I suspect this was the writer’s intention.

So yeah, the new version of The Invisible Man is a pretty great time at the cinema and something I would recommend to fans of well put together suspense thrillers. A good attempt to resurrect a part of the Universal franchise.

Upgrade

STEM Fatale

Upgrade
2018 Australia Directed by Leigh Whannell
UK cinema release print.

Blimey... this film took me by surprise. At least in terms of how well put together it is.

Upgrade is a film which was actually showing at last weekend’s FrightFest... where I ignored it completely in favour of other films. Which I’m glad I did now because... why pay extra out on a more expensive ticket when you can see it for considerably less at your local flea pit a week later? I had no idea what this was about when I saw it mentioned in my local cinema listings but the title did ring that FrightFest bell in my mind so I looked at the trailer online and immediately knew I had to see this thing.

The film is written and directed by Leigh Whannell who, amongst other things he’s done as a writer, has written and acted in the Insidious movies (he plays Specs in these movies and also directed one of them). Here he writes and directs (but doesn’t act in) something which is not a horror movie... instead it’s a full on science fiction epic made with, I would imagine, a much lower budget than some studios would throw at it but he gets absolutely first class results with what he has to spend here. The film looks great and plays like a slick and somewhat dirty sci-fi movie of the 80s or 90s... think early David Cronenberg meets Robocop and you’ll have some idea of how this movie feels.

The film is gritty and unashamedly violent but it's also is hugely entertaining and gives you something to think about too. The story is all important and this doesn’t feel like a load of set pieces half heartedly sewn together to give the audience a thrill ride... that stuff is just the icing on the cake here. This is exactly the kind of stealth movie making we need more of in modern cinema and my respect for this writer/director is really beginning to grow now.

After an opening credits sequence where logos and the title of the film are announced, rather than written, by a computer voice over a graphic representation of the sound waves of that voice, we find the film is set in a near future, not too far from the world of Blade Runner (reviewed here) and just a little step further on from something like Hotel Artemis (reviewed here). It introduces us to Grey Trace, played by Logan Marshall-Green and his wife Asha, played by Melanie Vallejo and establishes their loved up relationship in exactly the way you’d expect it to unfold before their world is pulled apart. Grey fixes up old style petrol driven cars for rich customers and we are introduced to another important character in the film, Eron Keen played by Harrison Gilbertson, in this capacity. We are then shown the dangers of technology when Asha’s self piloting car crashes and her and Grey are mugged. Or appear to be. Asha is shot  in front of Grey, who has been paralysed by a bolt shot into the top of his spine and he watches her die while the gang of villains get away.

We are then treated to a long sequence establishing how the incapacitated Grey survives and is plunged into the depths of despair, trapped in a body he can’t move and how he has to become reliant on technology he hates to do even the simplest thing. He can’t even help Detective Cortez, played brilliantly here by Betty Gabriel, who I’d seen run over by a train only weeks before at the same cinema in Unfriended - Dark Web (reviewed here), as she tries to find the people responsible for Grey’s plight.

Then Eron Keen, who also happens to be the head of a techno giant corporation, offers Grey a revolutionary chip based computer programme called STEM, which he plants into his spine and which enables Grey to move his limbs and get around again. Better than that because, when Grey lets STEM take over his body... STEM is represented by a HAL9000-like voice in his head (voiced by Simon Maiden), talking to him... he turns into a killing machine and is more than capable of finding the killers and dealing out justice himself. However, there’s more to this movie than it just being a simplistic, sci-fi laced revenge movie and that’s about all I’m going to say in regards to the story content as I don’t want to put any spoilers in here.

Upgrade is an absolutely brilliant and entertaining experience though and, where the film does delve into clichéd sci-fi areas, it does it with such a sense of grace and self awareness that you really can’t fault the writing. Nor the acting as Marshall-Green positively shines as Grey, doing a really great job which involves a lot of comedy timing, as well as the portrayal of depression and intimidating intensity called for in certain sequences of the movie.

It’s a grim film in some ways but there’s a lot of humour in here too... mainly coming from Grey’s inner dialogue with STEM and also his own reactions to what his body is doing on his behalf when he lets STEM take over. For instance, when he sees what he’s doing to people trying to attack him or when he’s looking away because he can’t bear to see what he’s doing to one of the bad guys in an interrogation scene (the camera stays with Grey’s face as we hear him slicing up the face of someone to get information).

The film also has a pretty cool score by someone called Jed Palmer which really pumps up the emotions and enhances various scenes. Alas, it’s only available away from the movie as a download so until a proper CD comes out, it looks like I won’t be able to listen to the music from this one. Which is a shame... would have been an instant purchase for me.

And I haven’t got much more to say about Upgrade. It’s a damn near perfect slice of sci-fi and I didn’t quite see the ending coming... at least not in quite the same variation as the writer went for here and, when it did look like it was going to throw away all the good work that was done with a nauseatingly nicey nice ending, it immediately sobered you up again with an alternative dose of reality which, while technically making it look like it could be continued for a sequel, absolutely shuts down the possibility of turning this into a franchise and making it much more of a self contained story. Which is something I appreciated. So, yeah, if you’re into gritty, low budget, visceral science fiction movies done right, Upgrade is definitely something that you should see. I hope this one gets a Blu Ray release soon because it’s going straight onto my Christmas list. Catch it while it’s playing.

Insidious - The Last Key (Insidious 4)

Insidiouself At home

Insidious - The Last Key (Insidious 4)
2018 USA/Canada Directed by Adam Robitel
UK cinema release print.

I’ve quite enjoyed the Insidious movies as they’ve been released into cinemas so far. Starting with the weakest and least compelling of the series, the original Insidious (reviewed here) was more or less an expansion/remake of the old Little Girl Lost episode of The Twilight Zone. However, both Insidious Chapter 2 (reviewed here) and Insidious Chapter 3 (reviewed here), just like The Purge franchise, took ideas from the concept pitched in that first installment and created much more enthralling and entertaining pictures out of them.

Now one of the important things about what those sequels came to be and what they are, thankfully, continuing to be in the prequel movies (parts 3 and 4) is something which I pointed out in my last review from the series and its something horror seems to do better than certain other genres... change peoples attitudes to what it's possible to portray and get accepted in mainstream movies, by stealth. And by that I mean that what we have in these last couple of films is not just a female action hero carrying the main protagonist role (which is no mean feat by itself) but, also, a 75 year old female action hero (in the form of Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier)  who is wandering around banishing demons and generally getting thrown around by them in a Marvel comics kind of way. I honestly applaud and support these films for this... where else in Hollywood are they giving action roles to heroines who are living past their seventh decade?  So yeah, I wish these films well.

Now, the bad news for me was that this was another prequel to the first two movies, being set chronologically in between the first prequel, Insidious Chapter 3 and the very first Insidious. In fact, this one is set just weeks/days before the events of original film, at the point where Elise enters the narrative of that particular supernatural adventure. Now I was hoping that this installment would finally be a sequel to the end of the second Insidious movie, where the now dead Elise is still looking after her two sidekicks in the form of Specs and Tucker (played in this one again by the film’s writer Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson) from the other side of the spiritual realm known in this series as ‘the further’ and sees something there so terrifying that we need to know who she’s seen.  Alas, the answer to that one is not tackled here, either but, at least the film does take us right up to the first one chronologically so, who knows, if this one does well enough at the box office (it certainly deserves to) then hopefully the writers will have nowhere left to go other than carrying on from that moment in time at the end of the second.

Either way, this is another strong entry in the series which, although I didn’t prefer it as much as the previous two, still entertains and brings the scares when it needs to... not so many scares, for sure but, when it gets those shock moments right, it really manages to get the jump on the audience. Actually, I found it amusing from the chuckles of anticipation and the pent up tension in the auditorium of the screening I went to, mostly from teenage couples, that the horror film is still very much, in some ways, a kind of ‘rites of passage’ experience. I could almost see the hormones bubbling up in some of the couples sitting in my nearest proximity.

So the film starts off with an extended flashback into Elise’s childhood and we begin to see, in this and other flashbacks and, also, in those moments where adventures in ‘the further’ overlap in shifting time zones, how Elise came to be the person she is at the time of this story. We learn just what kind of burden she carries around with her, too... as we meet her family at various points in time. It’s also a nice bit of writing that some of the revelations we find out about Elise’s past are also news to her and we see how she reacts to these reveals as we respond to them ourselves.

The movie goes gets straight to the point with all the supernatural stuff here and, although there are the obvious suspenseful, drawn out scenes of lurking dread in the mix, there is no slow build up reveal to the first presence of the ghostly apparitions and, although this approach maybe shouldn’t work so well, the director seems to really get away with it very well here. It's very rapidly paced and there’s a lot crammed in. Even some of the editing is judicious with short cuts like watching Elise walk through a door in relative close up, towards the camera and then, in the next master shot, cutting to her already being halfway through the next room. It’s something which, perhaps, should seem a little out of place here, when timing in these kinds of films is a crucial element but... nope... it all works quite well and the frights don’t lose too much impact in the scenes which matter in terms of jump scares.

There’s a wonderful sequence where Elise is going through a ventilator shaft (much like Dallas in the first of Ridley Scott’s ALIEN films) and she finds her way blocked in a couple of sections by piles of suitcases. As she goes through each pile, unlocking and opening as she goes, she finds sinister contents I won't reveal here and, as she does so, we are made aware of the old ‘sinister demonic ghost's point of view’ approaching one of the suitcase from behind. Each time Elise has a case lid up, shielding her view of the rest of the shaft in front of her, the ‘ghost camera’ saunters up from behind the lid and, as we cut back to Elise closing it, we assume that something is going to be there with her as she shuts the lid to reveal it and... each time she does it, nothing is revealed. And then, after a few of these cases, we get the expected jump scare but, because the director has deftly used the old clichéd horror syntax of manipulating expectations through shot movement, the audience is effectively blinded by those expectations of just where that ‘attack’ is going to come from. So, yeah, there’s some nice stuff happening here.

We also get a possible set up for a worthy successor to Elise and, it will be interesting to see whether, if they do decide to pick up the hanging thread from the end of the second movie, they bring back this character introduced here to act as the ‘conduit person’ between Elise in ‘the further’ and the real world. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what this character’s function is here, if the writer and producers are thinking far enough ahead.

As far as bad stuff here... well, two things really.

Once again, composer Joseph Bishara provides an appropriate though somehow more restrained musical score for the film but what he doesn’t do is give it the signature, scare the hell out of everyone, extended dissonance on the revelation of the film’s title at both the start and end of the movie as the previous installments did. This was always part of the fun and I don’t know why the decision was made to not do that this time when it’s become an established part of scoring these films.

Similarly, in terms of continuity... why is this not considered Insidious Chapter Four? While Insidious - The Last Key is an okay title and makes some reference to some truly, nicely surreal uses of keys in this film... it feels almost like the people behind the scenes are bailing out of the timeline they set up in the previous three somehow. Even though it’s certainly evident that this film finds a perfect fit in its place within the series. I don’t understand why that decision was made.

Still, those are my only real complaints and although, as I said, I didn’t quite think this one as strong as the previous two, Insidious - The Last Key is still a great ride for fans of the horror genre and, if you like the Insidious films anyway, surely not one to be missed. Plus, like I said earlier, this film has a main protagonist who is a 75 year old woman... go support this stuff so we can see more films with this option on the table. Send Hollywood that message by plonking down your pennies on stuff like this... I’m glad I did.

Insidious Chapter 3

Insidious Elf, 
One of the Family

Insidious Chapter 3
2015  Canada/USA
Directed by Leigh Whannell
UK cinema release print.

My personal reactions to the Insidious films have been documented on this blog as each movie has been released. Regular readers may remember that I really didn’t think a whole lot of the first Insidious movie (reviewed here), dismissing it as mostly being a remake of the old Little Girl Lost episode of the original series of The Twilight Zone, filtered by way of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s big budget reworking of elements of that story, Poltergeist, in 1982. Well put together but nothing we hadn’t seen done a fair few times before and with a disappointing last quarter of an hour or so which plunged it into teen slasher horror of the worst kind. Why I bothered seeing the sequel to this one is purely because I was curious as to how the ending of that movie could be used as a way in to the second. When I saw Insidious 2 (reviewed here) I found it to be a lot more interesting because of where the story had been left and a much stronger entry in the series.

Also, and I’m trying not to be spoilery for either that movie or this third part here, one of the more interesting characters in that second film was in a place right at the end where a sequel including this character in the circumstances she finds herself in at the end of that film would be most interesting and certainly something you wouldn’t normally see in a modern movie for a main character in a story.

As it happens, I kinda half got my wish but was initially somewhat sceptical when I found out that the third movie is, in fact, a prequel and, also, it wasn’t directed by James Wan, director of the first two films (and also the magnificent modern horror classic The Conjuring - reviewed here). However, having now seen it, I am actually grateful on a couple of counts that we’ve gone back in time a little for this one. Also, seeing that one of the producers is Oren Peli, whose Paranormal Activities franchise also time leaped back for the third movie (reviewed here) and strengthened the future films by doing so, meant that I’m not against the idea. This film might well be used for taking the franchise in a more coordinated direction in the future, I suspect. It’s also being directed by the writer of all three installments, his debut in this function, Leigh Whannel. Whannel also has a recurring role in all three films... but I’ll get to that soon enough.

So what we have here is a completely different set of characters and it involves a young girl, Quinn Brenner played by actress Stefanie Scott, who is trying to help hold everyone together in a small family unit comprising of her brother (played by Tate Berney) and her father Sean, played by Dermot Mulroney, after the death of her mother. She is quite distressed by her mother’s death (as anyone would be) and she still thinks she feels her presence trying to make contact. Desperately needing to talk to her departed parent, she seeks out the psychic investigator/medium from the first two films, Elise Rainier played by veteran actress (of 180 movies at time of writing) Lin Shaye. Now, the film is set only two years before the events in the first movie but, here, Elise has given up offering her unique services to people because of a dark phantom who tries to kill her every time she does. This is not what you would expect from the character only a short number of years before we initially met her in the first chapter and, as she slowly gets involved with trying to stop the demon who is terrorising young Quinn in a series of the usual, exploitative scare tactics inflicted on audiences in these kinds of spectacles, we are slowly revealed to the elements of her back story that initially got her there in the first place.

And this is why the film gets interesting and, frankly, does what all good genre cinema does... influencing mainstream thinking by going through the back door, hopefully. In this film, Elise is pretty much the main protagonist or, at the very least, as much of a main protagonist as Quinn Brenner, getting at least equal, probably more actually, screen time. It’s a strong, female role in a genre which has always promoted strong female roles, even as far back as some of the early 'Hammer Horrors' and it goes so much further beyond just the general whittling away of characters until you’re left with the one, final girl who becomes the strong survivor by default (a pattern even followed by Sigourney Weaver’s much celebrated character in the first Alien movie, of course). Now, on it’s own as a strong element of "gender in your genre", that’s all well and good and is probably a cause for congratulation... but that’s not the sole reason why I think this film is just a little more ready to indulge in some, almost subversive, shenanigans and why I hope the effect of this film might be able to have some slow but sure widespread influence, not just on the horror genre in general but in, hopefully, mainstream cinematic culture.

The thing is... I hope Lin Shaye doesn’t mind me saying that she’s no spring chicken. She’s 72 years old in fact. The role she is playing and how it develops and builds over the course of this film is kind of, by the end game, a psychic female action hero. When terrified by a demon in an other wordly zone (The Further), for instance, she breaks it’s grip with a head butt to the face and a bring it on kind of attitude which causes it to back down. She then proceeds to find her inner strength with a display of psychic carnage in this other plane and, mostly, wreaks havoc on her ghostly enemies like a modern, female Dr. Strange. How many other movies out there at the moment, or in a very long time for that matter, have 72 year old lady action hero’s kicking the villain’s butts? This is terrific stuff and unheard of for mainstream cinema these days... so I’m hoping that this will gradually be an influence on other horror movies, little by little, until it slips into main blockbuster cinematic syntax by a process of casual familiarity.

It’s okay to have very old, female heroes, folks... and guess what the average age of the target audience that a horror movie like the ones in the Insidious franchise are being aimed at is? Well, I don’t know but I’m pretty sure these things are being made for late teens/early twenties audiences primarily to be able to get the money back... so there’s that. Low budget horror movies usually turn a profit and this is the kind of genre where you can sneakily make this kind of change first... so something to think about there and I’m pleased with the writer for doing this.

Of course, another thing the horror genre does, by its very nature and due to an easy recognition of the visual language of the horror film, is to try and concentrate your attention away from where the scare is coming but, in a lot of cases and including this film, that also means turning the camera to places where the action is not happening and concentrating on different areas of the shot to give your mind a build up to the scare. Now, when you think about it, allowing other things in a frame to dominate over the actual action that’s going on in the rest of the shot is more of a European way of shooting a movie than something that would normally be accepted in a mainstream American piece. It’s a specific way of doing things and it’s no better or worse than any other kind of strategic visual aesthetic but I find it intriguing where the one kind of US mainstream cinema where that is encouraged is in the horror genre. I’m not saying it’s in any way a deliberate nod to a less native approach to shooting movies (and it wouldn’t have been seen to be either, up until around the late 1970s in US movie production)... it’s more just a symptom of the approach to being creative with some overly familiar genre rules at this point in the game... but it’s certainly something else which separates what you can get happening in a low budget horror movie at this time which wouldn’t be acceptable in a lot of other current commercial product.

The other nice thing about this film is the return, in the last third of the movie, of Tucker and Specs, played by Angus Simpson and the writer/director of this movie, Leigh Whannell - the two nerdy psychic investigators with their blog, 'Spectral Sightings'. It’s here we see them meet Elise for the first time and, due to events in this film, forge an alliance that will see them through to the team they have become in the first two movies and, hopefully, the quite unique team they will be in any subsequent chapters. There are some nice touches in here and, although I found some of the transition jumps in this movie a bit out of kilter with what I would have expected (and I don’t think that this was necessarily done on purpose but possibly from a lack of shots designed to be edited into a workable transition?), I think Whannell does a competent job as a director. It's maybe not quite up to the same standard as the second movie, to be sure, but it’s certainly a whole lot better than the first installment and, coupled with another winning score for the series by Joseph Bishara, with more melody being allowed to bleed into the atonality in this set of compositions than usual, then you have a pretty solid time at your local cinema if supernatural chills are your kinda thing. Still happy to go and see what they do with a fourth one on the strength of this and, frankly, the inclusion of a 72 year old lady action hero is something to be celebrated, no matter what genre it’s happening in. So maybe check this one out if horror movies are your kind of thing and, due to the chronological setting of this one, you don’t even really need to have seen the first two movies to give this one a shot. Enjoy.