Insidious The Last Key Leads to Nowhere

The Fourth Trip to The Further Flounders

Insidious, Insidious, on the screen, show us some horror we haven’t yet seen.

The Last Key is the 4th installment in the Insidious franchise and hit theatres January 5th, ringing in the audiences new year to a chorus of screams and great patches of goosebumps pricking up and down our arms and legs.

Orrrrr did it?

Medium Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) is back and alive in this movie, one that takes place prior to the original 2010 Insidious film where she’s *spoiler alert* murdered by the father of her young client. Eight years later we’ve come to the 4th film in the eerie saga about vengeful ghosts and diabolical demons who lurk in the shadows and in a sort of in-between purgatory between life and death called The Further. It’s a landscape, barren and chill, bathed in cool tones and rolling with fog. It’s a disorienting and endless, an anxiety provoking and heart pounding nightmare space one riddled with revenants dead set on revenge.

The Last Key emphasizes Elise, and this time we delve into her childhood-- one that was marked by her ability to see ghosts and their brutal deaths. In New Mexico with her timid mother, hard-drinking stony-faced, and argumentative father, and her sensitive little brother Elise tries to keep the paranormal activity to a minimum. The Rainier home, a charming antiquated house starts off as vaguely storybook, but ends up becoming more of a sequestered prison than anything else….mainly because the home is behind bars. Literally. Perched midway atop a hilly incline, the only neighbors are the criminals incarcerated in the massive prison complex, something that’s not next door but still far too close in proximity for comfort.

This unease seeps into the film, made even more potent by the fear Elise and her mother carry around on a daily basis-- not because of pesky poltergeists but by a very human, very living man who proves that monsters aren’t just the spirits that go bump in the night. Livid and abusive, it’s his cruelty that destroys the Rainier family, and at the same time, frees Elise from his grasp. These moments are played by two different actresses, an older child (Ava  Kolker) and later a young teen (Hana Hayes) both are without a question Elise, and both show remarkable range in their emotion and acting and leave memorable impressions.

It’s under the stern rule of her father (Josh Stewart) that Elise accidentally releases an evil entity and opens doors that ought to stay closed. From one, a twisted creature with a rasping voice, and long dark, mottled limbs with keys for fingers skulks out from the shadows. Ready to unleash its fury onto anyone in spitting distance. One of the first casualties? Elise’s mom! Just a few years later Elise books it out of there leaving her sensitive little brother and abusive widowed father behind.

Years pass and now in her senior age Elise is lured back to her childhood hell house by a man who claims to be haunted by the very same shadows, phantoms, and malevolent spirits that were in residence while Elise was there. But Elise isn’t alone in her mission to face off against the undead-- her ghost hunter squad, Specs (Leigh Whannell)  and Tucker (Angus Sampson) is right by her side.  That duo is just as hilarious and odd-coupleish as they were in the previous films and we finally get to see their fateful first meeting with Elise before they permanently join her team, so to speak, working with her in the later films.

The plot here, about the monsters in human skin that live among us, is powerful and adds more dimension to the storm of phantoms. There are two very shocking reveals that come to light that are enough to make our heart drop and blood run cold, not because they were committed by beings from the further, but by men. Living, breathing, ordinary men.

Unfortunately, there is an enormous way that Insidious The Last Key fails. Like Jon Snow in Game of Thrones: WE KNOW NOTHING!!!!! Look at my caps lock despair!!!! There’s so much that doesn’t get answered!!!! The origins of the key creature is barely explored, we just scratch the surface of Elise’s gifts, and the disturbing revelations just scratch the surface of what could’ve been a truly horrifying descend into the deranged minds of the villains.

The Last Key instead, drops that and like a dog spinning around chasing its tail, ends up full circle back where it began-- with Dalton’s “possession” in the original Insidious. It’s a very uneven ending that doesn’t do The Last Key justice. Is it because filmmakers want to squeeze a fifth movie out of the franchise? The consequence of that move means that The Last Key has an unfinished and rushed vibe to it. There are canyon sized plot holes we’re left with which is frustrating, because what was that OVER AN hour long time we spent watching this for?!

In a word: Elise. She’s one of the only things that works in The Last Key, and is just as captivating and powerful as she was in the earlier Insidious films. Watching her history play out is the high point of The Last Key and it does make it worth a watch.  Elise is one of the most dimensional characters in horror films-- much like Lorraine and Ed Warren in the Conjuring universe films, played by actors Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, respectively, Elise is a lead that’s real enough to be our neighbor or friend.

Final Verdict: Wait for the DVD release or free streaming. There’s no need to spend your hard earned cash on cinema tickets for the Last Key. Must see? Nah. More like a solid “maybe”.

Photos from IMDB