Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Much to my friends’ widespread horror (pun intended), there is one genre of film that I’ve just never been able to appreciate. Whilst there are undoubtedly a few classics (Silence of the Lambs, The Shining), these are very few and far between.
Getting inside the viewer’s head and presenting a true psychological rollercoaster is a lost art, with the field oversaturated with identikit cookie-cutter flicks that gauge success by how many litres of claret are spilled or by how many times you can get the audience to jump out their seat with a swift whack of an organ key.
So it’s a very rare occasion that I’ll will myself to watch a new horror film at the cinema, but with the slim Ramadan pickings on offer, I was left with little else.
Insidious: Chapter 3, probably because the writers could not think of a way to continue the established story in time for the studio’s impending deadline, is actually a prequel to the first two films.
‘Chapter 0’ would have been a better subtitle then, but considering most horror film franchises these days try to eke out instalments stretching into double figures, that would mean going backwards and having to think up another story years down the line to hit the magic ‘Chapter 10’.
With that said, the story does not tell us anything about the origin of these demons and why they decided to haunt the family in the first two movies, so I’m still wondering as to what the point of this film was aside from a couple of cameos to get the fans nudging and pointing.
The film mainly follows Sean Brenner (Mulroney), his teenage daughter Quinn (Scott) and bratty youngster Alex (Tate Berney). After the wife and mother passed away from cancer, Sean has been struggling to keep the family together and Quinn, particularly affected by the loss, has been trying to make contact via the spirit world.
Unfortunately, Quinn’s efforts to call out to her mother attracts other ghouls to her, meaning the presence she’s begun to feel watching over her is anything but motherly by nature.
She seeks out series stalwart Elise (Shaye), who here is living the life of a hermit and refusing to use her powers to help anyone after her last venture to the spirit world resulted in bringing back some unwanted ghostly baggage.
As such, the film focuses on Quinn’s attempts to convince Elise to help her be rid of her demons and the subsequent ‘riddening’, while we have to suffer through eye-rolling distractions such as the neighbouring love-struck teen throwing goo-goo eyes at Quinn (with reciprocal daggers from Sean), and the ‘completely crazy and nonsensical’ woman from downstairs who, of course, is the only one who actually knows what’s happening.
Despite the re-trodden story, a couple of the scares are actually intense. After an accident, Quinn becomes bedridden and paralysed, so when the paranormal forces come to get her, we know she can’t just scream and run away. With the help of some nifty camerawork that puts us behind Quinn’s eyes and forces us to look under the bed with her, these are by far the most effective sequences in the movie.
The characters, sadly, are so stereotypical and stock that you can’t appreciate their acting. When we manage to feel empathy towards Sean, when his struggles to cope after losing his wife are highlighted, he’ll say something corny or act dumb, which instantly washes all that feeling away. Quinn can put on a decent anguished face and she can scream loud, so I guess she plays her part to perfection.
Ultimately, Insidious: Chapter 3 delivered at least a few genuine scares, but it doesn’t pull up any trees either. Pretty much like every other horror film made in the past 20 years, it had one or two frights, tons of screaming, and given a week you wouldn’t be able to differentiate it from its peers.
See you next year for Chapter 4: The Midquel.
Showing in Cineco and Dana Cineplex
