Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)

** ½ out of ****

Before talking about this movie, which was better than expected (as are all the Insidious movies), I have a question. Do you have an actor or actress that you so identify with one particular role that no matter who they play, you can only see that one character from their past? I do – one of the stars of “Insidious Chapter 3”, Dermot Mulroney. No matter what role he plays, all I can ever see is Dirty Steve from “Young Guns” (1988). Throughout this film I kept expecting him to start yelling that Chavez was outside “doin' it with his horse”.

Now let me preamble a discussion of “Insidious: Chapter 3” with a few comments about the first two films in the series. I am a big fan of scary movies, of which there are remarkably few good ones. Lots of exploitation films out there have jumps in them, but they are not scary per se. For me, a scary movie is one that leaves those invisible fingers crawling up your back and makes the hair on your arms stand up. It's something that is just creepy as hell and makes you feel really uncomfortable. And for my money, “Insidious” (2010) is the scariest damn movie I have seen in decades. It lost steam for the last 30 minutes, but only because they had to reduce your imagination and show things on the screen to help wrap up the story. But the first hour had my skin crawling. I loved it. And the second movie, "Insidious Chapter 2" (2013) was, shockingly, able to do many of the same things. They are genuinely scary movies and I love them.

That being said, “Insidious: Chapter 3” is a horse of a different colour. It is a decent little fright-fest, but falls more in line with the typical “let's give them a few jolts” style of scaring than in the disturbing creepiness of the original two films. It isn't bad, but if you're looking for more of the same as delivered by the first two, you won't find it here.

This film tells a story occurring three years prior to the events of the original “Insidious”. Here we find Elise (Linn Shaye - the psychic lady from the first two films) is retired, having found her abilities to communicate with the dead to be too disturbing, and certain that some of the dead want to do her harm. She is visited at her home by Quinn (Stefanie Scott), a teen that recently lost her mother and wants badly to communicate with her in the afterlife. Elise warns her that her mother is not trying to communicate and that continuing to try is dangerous. “When you call out to one of the dead, they ALL hear you.”

Quinn wants to be an actress, and wants badly to escape from the life she is in. Her father (Dermot Mulroney – aka Dirty Steve) needs her help in bringing up her younger brother and Quinn feels she has too much on her plate. But against Elise's advice, she continues to try to reach her mother, opening the door for a spectre that wants to possess and destroy her. Pop-out-of-the-closet, made-you-jump hijinks ensue.

The most interesting thing about the film is the evolution of the character Elise, and her eventual participation in trying to save Quinn. We again meet Tucker and Specs (Angus Simpson and Leigh Whannel) as the paranormal experts, and they contribute their usual chuckles to the story.

Overall this was a decent film, certainly worth seeing considering the massive amounts of crap you find in the horror genre, but it really falls rather short of the first two. The hair on my arms didn't stand up once.