James Wan produces each, and Patrick Wilson starred in the initial films for each series, while the stories that make up the movies are said to come straight from the life of medium Lorraine Warren. I genuinely can’t recall the plot to The Conjuring after watching Insidious 2, and can’t remember which film hosted the Darth Maul Demon after sitting through the less-than-stellar Annabelle (a prequel to The Conjuring, if you’re keeping score.)
But after eight years, it seems like the Insidious films are going to continue to concentrate on the life of Lorraine Warren, while The Conjuring stories are going the route of the horror anthology. And after viewing Insidious: The Last Key, I’d have to say I’m tired of following the demonic encounters of the main protagonist of the Insidious movies, Elise (our bio-fictionalized Lorraine Warren.)
Insidious: The Last Key’s visual elements and pacing are its only strong suits. The dialogue, sound effects, music, characters, and story arc are hamfisted, disinteresting, and at times, scatterbrained. There are countless moments where Elise is expositing on the why of the haunting that I felt completely unnecessary. We’re horror fans, we suspend logic; and more often than not, the why is better left unspoken, or at least open to varied interpretation.
The film does very well in showing the development of the haunting of Elise’s childhood home in New Mexico. How it corrupted her prison guard father, then its modern-day caretaker; how the Key-Fingered Demon itself was released, and the way in which it accomplished its deeds. The visual elements surrounding the emergence of the Key-Fingered Demon in the basement of the New Mexican home was the centerpiece of the film. The demon is a worthy villain, its purpose clear: bringing out the demonic from within the living.
Thoughts on the charactersElise and her forgettable, cringe-inducing sidekicks are called to her childhood home. She hadn’t been back since she was a teenager, driven off by her abusive father. Her only regret, that she left her younger brother, Christian, behind. Christian is a bystander in childhood, and adulthood. His only contribution is birthing two daughters who will aid Elise in confronting the demon. The girls are all-too eager to help their kooky aunt out, a woman they’ve never met nor even heard a word about from their father. One of the girls, Imogen, is a medium like Elise, and ultimately enters the Further (spirit world) to rescue Elise from the Key-Fingered Demon. There is a recurring ghost girl with more presence and personality than Imogen.
In the scenes focusing on Elise’s childhood, the looming presence of the nearby prison, and its light-flickering executions, permeates the story, but is never developed.
Christian never believed his sister saw ghosts and hated her for terrorizing him with her stories. By the end of the movie, he is shown no evidence, experiences nothing of the hauntings, and never considers whether Elise has endangered his daughters, or worse, but all is forgiven.
The movie reveals that Elise’s father was guided by the demon to do hideous acts, which leads Elise to a moment of empathy for her father, but it doesn’t quite spell out whether all of the heinous acts were demon-driven, or just the most vile. It’s important, because if the violence against his daughter wasn’t also demon-driven, the empathy she shows him is out of place.
When Elise begins seeing entities in her bedroom as a child, the Darth Maul Demon from Insidious briefly appears. Everyone knows this particular demon. Why show him if he’s not going to appear again in the house? You see Darth Maul again in the final scene, which attempts to set up a new movie, but it’s completely unrelated to Elise’s childhood home, and was an unnecessary, and distracting, addition early on.
If you didn’t like Annabelle or Annabelle: Creation, but liked the first few Conjuring and/or Insidious movies, this film is good for one theater viewing, and no subsequent home viewings. If you know nothing of the earlier Conjuring or Insidious installments, then this movie is probably a waste of your time. Insidious: The Last Key relies too heavily on fandom. There is little depth to the storytelling self-contained within the movie. You’re expected to have seen one of the earlier installments to be invested in the lackluster story.
Joe Sullivan is the author of several paranormal and dark fantasy books, available on Amazon.Share this:
