Three years before the Lambert haunting, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) was ready to quit being a psychic. Then a teenage girl comes to her for help communicating with the girl’s dead mother. The girl does not heed Elise’s advice and tries to contact her mother on her own, leading to dire consequences. An evil spirit heard her calls and has latched on to her. Elise soon realizes she cannot stop doing what she was made to do. It is up to her to stop the entity from slowly killing the girl and imprisoning her soul.

The first thing I will say about this film was that it was down-right scary. There were multiple times that it made me jump, even when I knew something was about to come out and scare me. That being say, it seemed like the film relied very heavily on the scares to carry the story along. Throughout the film they constantly used scare tactics to make audiences jump out of their seats, which worked very well, but they relied so heavily on the scares that the story was a bit lacking. It was almost like every five minutes something was popping out to say “boo.”

The best part about this film, and the entire Insidious franchise, is Lin Shaye. She is an amazing actress, and her character in these films is so easy to love. It seems like this film was almost meant to be an origin story for Shaye’s character, Elise, but it was muddled a bit by the story of the poor teenage victim, Quinn (Stefanie Scott). I really feel the film would have been so much better if they had made it solely about Elise, and only involved Quinn’s story when it related Elise helping her. Considering the fact that this is a prequel, it only seems logical that it would focus on Elise. This would also have provided more opportunity to build on the mythology that was built up so well in chapters 1 and 2. There were definitely a couple attempts at adding to the mythology, such as Elise talking about the “woman in black” that wants to kill her and explaining how Elise first met Tucker and Specs, but it didn’t seem sufficient.

The acting in this film was phenomenal. Shaye, of course, was amazing as always. While her character was absolutely infuriating with how stupid she was, Stefanie Scott still did an amazing job as well. She just kept doing the most idiotic things, and she was so oblivious to the danger she was in it drove me crazy. My dislike for her character had more to do with the way she was written than her acting ability. I also loved The Man Who Can’t Breathe (Micheal Reid MacKay). Even though his character says maybe two words in the entire film, he is so good at emoting through what little we can see of his face and through his body that he sends chills down your spine. I may also be a bit biased when it comes to MacKay just because he played the mummy in one of my favorite movies of all time, The Monster Squad.

Visual effects are extremely important in horror films. The Insidious franchise does a great job in that department. The way they portray “The Further” I find especially effective. They keep it almost entirely black with fog drifting throughout, using only a single lantern to focus your attention on wherever the light is. The makeup they created for MacKay’s character was especially interesting. They used very minimal effects, making him look thin and sickly, while also giving him the appearance of having a decaying body with sallow skin and thinning hair.

Insidious: Chapter 3 was very successful in the sense that it delivered the scares and kept your eyes glued to the screen. It also brought back everyone’s favorite character, Elise, and told us a little bit about her life before she dealt with the Lambert haunting. There is definitely room for improvement. The story should have focused more on Elise, and relied more heavily on a quality storyline rather than the scares. Either way, the film was really entertaining and was a generally successful installment in a terrifying horror film franchise.

OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10