I:C3
**½
Leigh Whannel steps out as director for the third installment of the Insidious franchise that could very well reach the same tally of sequels as the Saw franchise he helped develop. I felt after the third film was over that Chapter 3 was merely a detour for the possible next film. If anything, this sequel really allows Lin Shaye to step out from a scene-stealing Zelda Rubentstein type character actor and take the film with her. This film is a prequel before the first two films took place. Shaye has lost her husband to suicide, and her psychic gift has been put aside since. When teenager Quinn Brenner shows up at the doorstep of Shaye's psychic Elise, she hopes to make contact with her lost mother, who died of cancer.
This innocent desire to communicate with her mom and know she's there produces a dark attachment (a grotesque figure with an oxygen mask, leaving behind ink-like footprints to let others know he was there) who came out of the dark of *the further* as a means to totally "suck Quinn's soul". So this film's main story arc concerns the "man who can't breathe" always horrifying and assaulting Quinn, while her overworked and stressed-out pops, Sean (Dermot Mulroney) tries to determine how to save her. Two paranormal researchers, Tucker and Specs (Angus Sampson and director Whannel), who operate a ghost hunting website, mentioned to Sean by his son, try to help uncover the entity harming Quinn, but they will need Elise's abilities in order to truly make a difference. Pretty much, I felt this third film was a minor diversion that gets us to the next film, Sean and Quinn's life under duress thanks to this thing from the further (Elise named the darker place where the worse entities emerge from) a story told in order to introduce Tucker and Specs to Elise; Elise is the character with the most to gain by this film as she even shoves entities aside who threaten the innocent, defying a cross-dressing entity that aims to kill her due to her ability to rescue innocents from those occupying the further and dragging souls into their domain. Tucker and Specs are purposely clueless researchers, amateurs really hoping to make it in the paranormal field, Elise their eventual godsend to do so. Cute Stefanie Scott is perfectly cast as this pure high school kid mature beyond her years. Mulroney is the father who is struggling to juggle responsibilities, expecting his daughter to be mother as well. Harried and busy, Sean is trying all he can but the weight of the loss of his wife has produced obvious strain. Quinn's attacks certainly don't help matters.
But the film is stringing us along with this story in order to deliver a few "bumps in the night" and "dark specters doing very bad things". The film borrows cliches about the "mother who is there to help her daughter in her time of need", the request of those concerned to a victim for her to "fight against the darkness wanting her soul", and the paranormal tools of the trade used to find spirits and document them. Alas, the final scene is perhaps what most will remember...a scene that has nothing to do with the characters we spent 90 minutes with. It isn't that the family of three does anything wrong for us not to invest in their welfare, but the story doesn't particularly give them identities beyond specifics as "introductory items" (the father electrician who lost his wife to cancer and now dotes on the injures daughter; the daughter who wants to be a theater actress and loves reading books; the son who needs attention and isn't getting it due to the chaos of a mother not there). Once the specter rears his ugly head, the film isn't too bothered with their lives as much as what the dark attachment is doing to Quinn, how Elise will need to put aside the pain of her own loss (and fear of her own death if she does help) in order to help Quinn, and the "otherworld" that exists opposite the mortal world we now live.
Shock visuals and a sound track that wants to push our buttons follow. Like when we see the "half death" vision of Quinn (no face, arms, or legs), as 50 % of her soul now belongs to the "man who cannot breathe". Or when Quinn, under the almost total control of the dark attachment, breaks away her casts and walks despite the bones not yet mended crackling. The floor above the apartment of Sean and Quinn cracking or a near trip out of a window. The entity in Elise's "psychic room" trying to attack her and its presence in Quinn's room also. Pushing buttons even in the dramatic sense happens at the end when mommy comes to save the day, a letter to her daughter in a diary built to tug on the heart strings. There's significant use of slight hints at the specter's presence (one doozy in the curtains) close to Quinn used to creep out the audience. All that awaits is the boom noise to jolt those watching in theaters.
Still, all in all, compared to the previous film which I thought was lots of fun and quite memorable in the development of a cross-dressing serial killer as he related to Patrick Wilson's character, Insidious Chapter 3 didn't quite achieve the same reaction with me. I wasn't all that wowed by it. I don't see it even in the mix by week three, pretty much fading as Poltergeist Remake has. Still seeing Shaye get a chance to develop her character was a joy and easily the best part of the film to me. That and one particular scene is quite intense as an incapacitated Quinn lies helpless on the floor as "the man who cannot breathe" is closing the door, curtains, and such to make sure they are all alone. In a PG-13 film, such a scene derives from the inability to go too far, so instead there was needed an ensuing punch that implies a type of "soul rape". She is at "his" mercy, and her very life is at his perusal it would seem. Just showing his feet and the sound of his work in assuring that the two are all alone is quite a masterful touch in a film in desperate need of one.
Leigh Whannel steps out as director for the third installment of the Insidious franchise that could very well reach the same tally of sequels as the Saw franchise he helped develop. I felt after the third film was over that Chapter 3 was merely a detour for the possible next film. If anything, this sequel really allows Lin Shaye to step out from a scene-stealing Zelda Rubentstein type character actor and take the film with her. This film is a prequel before the first two films took place. Shaye has lost her husband to suicide, and her psychic gift has been put aside since. When teenager Quinn Brenner shows up at the doorstep of Shaye's psychic Elise, she hopes to make contact with her lost mother, who died of cancer.
 |
| Who goes there..could it be something insidious? |
But the film is stringing us along with this story in order to deliver a few "bumps in the night" and "dark specters doing very bad things". The film borrows cliches about the "mother who is there to help her daughter in her time of need", the request of those concerned to a victim for her to "fight against the darkness wanting her soul", and the paranormal tools of the trade used to find spirits and document them. Alas, the final scene is perhaps what most will remember...a scene that has nothing to do with the characters we spent 90 minutes with. It isn't that the family of three does anything wrong for us not to invest in their welfare, but the story doesn't particularly give them identities beyond specifics as "introductory items" (the father electrician who lost his wife to cancer and now dotes on the injures daughter; the daughter who wants to be a theater actress and loves reading books; the son who needs attention and isn't getting it due to the chaos of a mother not there). Once the specter rears his ugly head, the film isn't too bothered with their lives as much as what the dark attachment is doing to Quinn, how Elise will need to put aside the pain of her own loss (and fear of her own death if she does help) in order to help Quinn, and the "otherworld" that exists opposite the mortal world we now live.
Shock visuals and a sound track that wants to push our buttons follow. Like when we see the "half death" vision of Quinn (no face, arms, or legs), as 50 % of her soul now belongs to the "man who cannot breathe". Or when Quinn, under the almost total control of the dark attachment, breaks away her casts and walks despite the bones not yet mended crackling. The floor above the apartment of Sean and Quinn cracking or a near trip out of a window. The entity in Elise's "psychic room" trying to attack her and its presence in Quinn's room also. Pushing buttons even in the dramatic sense happens at the end when mommy comes to save the day, a letter to her daughter in a diary built to tug on the heart strings. There's significant use of slight hints at the specter's presence (one doozy in the curtains) close to Quinn used to creep out the audience. All that awaits is the boom noise to jolt those watching in theaters.
Still, all in all, compared to the previous film which I thought was lots of fun and quite memorable in the development of a cross-dressing serial killer as he related to Patrick Wilson's character, Insidious Chapter 3 didn't quite achieve the same reaction with me. I wasn't all that wowed by it. I don't see it even in the mix by week three, pretty much fading as Poltergeist Remake has. Still seeing Shaye get a chance to develop her character was a joy and easily the best part of the film to me. That and one particular scene is quite intense as an incapacitated Quinn lies helpless on the floor as "the man who cannot breathe" is closing the door, curtains, and such to make sure they are all alone. In a PG-13 film, such a scene derives from the inability to go too far, so instead there was needed an ensuing punch that implies a type of "soul rape". She is at "his" mercy, and her very life is at his perusal it would seem. Just showing his feet and the sound of his work in assuring that the two are all alone is quite a masterful touch in a film in desperate need of one.
Comments
Post a Comment