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Film: Insidious: The Last Key
Year: 2018
Director: Adam Robitel
Writer: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson
Review:
This film begins back in the 1950s. We see a vehicle entering gates for a prison. We go into a house that is in the background. The father of this family is Josh Stewart. He’s a guard at the prison. His wife is Tessa Ferrer. Their two children are Ava Kolker and Pierce Pope. The lights flicker in the house and Pope states that someone was just executed. Stewart scolds him for what he’s saying and Kolker reveals that she knows a lot about the man who died. Stewart gives her a look.
They go up to bed and Kolker talks to her brother. She peeks her head out of the blankets she uses as curtains to see that Pope is sleeping in a chair. Pope has whistle that Ferrer gave him if he ever needed her. Kolker then talks to a spirit in the closet and something grabs Pope while he is on Kolker’s bed. This brings their parents in.
Stewart doesn’t like that Kolker talks to ghosts and he asks her if she saw one. She doesn’t back down. He then hits her on the back with his cane and then takes her to the basement. He locks her down there for the night. Kolker ends up going to a wall and it talks to her with a little girl’s voice. It asks her to unlock the red door, which she does. There is a rumbling and Ferrer goes down to see what is happening. A cord wraps around her neck and she is hung. Stewart comes down and finds her dead.
The film then shifts to 2010. Lin Shaye was the little girl in the 50s. She goes downstairs and we see that Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson have moved in with her after what they did in the third installment of this series. She receives a phone call and the man asks for her help with a ghost. She stops writing the address, realizing it was her address to the house she grew up in. She tells the man on the phone she cannot help him.
Shaye then sits down with Whannell and Sampson, telling them more of her story. As a teen, she is Hana Hayes. Her brother is Thomas Robie. They are cleaning the floor and Hayes hears something. She goes into to the laundry room and sees a woman. She is Aleque Reid. Hayes tells Robie she sees someone and he tells her that she is scaring him. She wants him to come look and then Stewart appears. He looks in the room and doesn’t see anything so he goes to punish her. Hayes runs away, leaving her brother behind.
It returns to 2010 and she tells both of them that she has to deal with this on her own. They try to argue, but she won’t hear any of it. She packs and goes to leave, but they show up in an RV. They head for Five Keys, New Mexico.
They arrive at her childhood home and meet its new owner. He is Kirk Acevedo. There is one room that is really bad in the haunting and it turns out to be her bedroom. Shaye starts to look into the haunting there and something is calling her to the basement. She also finds her brother’s whistle. It is taken from her by a spirit of a woman. It does tell her that it needs her help. She finds a lot of secrets in the basement that she wasn’t bargaining for.
Shaye takes the guys to a place she used to love going to as a child. There she meets her brother, Bruce Davison, and his two beautiful daughters, Spencer Locke and Caitlin Gerard. Davison is upset with Shaye and doesn’t want to reconnect. He needs her help though when her daughters get caught up dealing with this spirit that has keys for fingers.
Can Shaye defeat this demon that she brought into this world when she was a child? Or will this spirit finally claim her like it’s always wanted?
I am a big fan of this series. I knew very little when I came into the original and it blew me away. This film is the fourth installment and I thought the writer, Whannell did a great job with keeping continuity. This film actually takes place right before the original and actually leads into it, which I loved. This one also picks up where the previous one ended as well. As a story guy, I really like that because it shows the attention to detail to me. I wasn’t a huge fan though of the city being named Five Keys and the creature using keys. I will admit it looked cool, but it did come off as slightly cheesy. I did like what it did by turning off vocal cords and wanting to use Shaye due to her power. It was nice to see the back-story for Shaye as I like her character a lot. There are a lot of emotions in this film and that surprised me. It made me loath Stewart. I forgive him a bit in the reveal, but it was powerful. I loved that part of the film too. The ending of this film was great how it ties everything up and then goes right into the original film.
The acting in this film was great. I can’t say enough about Shaye. She is this character to me and she did a wonderful job. Whannell and Sampson are great together. I love that they bicker and compete with each other for the two nieces of Shaye’s character. Acevedo was solid in his role. Gerard and Locke are both gorgeous. They also did a good job in their roles. Stewart is someone who I don’t see a lot in films, but I’m a fan of his as well. Ferrer was solid as well in the time she had on screen. I also need to commend Kolker. I really felt her emotions which surprised me for her age. The rest of the cast rounded out the film well.
The effects for the film were mostly practical, which I am a big fan of. I thought they were well done. The creature looked good to me. There was a little CGI, but even that looked real. I do have to admit, there was a few jump-scares that got me in this film. That doesn’t happen often so I have to give this film props. The editing of the film was good. I enjoyed that they went into back and forth with the past, showing the parallels between things that have happened. It was a good touch. The score of the film was good as well. They played with sound a lot and it gives a creepier feel.
Now with that said, I really enjoyed this film. I think that this film is good and the series in general. The story and continuity of it has been kept in line which I absolutely love. There are a lot of emotions in this film and it definitely adds to it. I enjoyed the ending and how it leads into the original film. The acting is solid in this film across the board. I don’t have complaints about any of their performances. The effects were mostly practical and looked great. Even the CGI looked good in my opinion. The editing of the film builds tension all the way until the climax where the payoff is worth it. The score and use of sound in this film was solid as well. This film actually could be watched on its own, which I’m a fan of, but it also fits into the series making the story even deeper. There are nods to the other films in it which are fun to see and hear. I would recommend giving this one a viewing if you are into haunted films.
My Rating: 8 out of 10