Director
Adam Robitel
Insidious: The Last Key (3/5 stars)
- Patrick Trusty
January is infamous for its bad films, and horror movies franchises usually go stale at one point from the fourth installment. Honestly, things didn’t look good for this movie at first glance, but never judge a book by its cover. In the end of it all, what’s more terrifying than Hollywood giving the impression that it’s actually trying during a January horror film?
The film series Insidious had its last installment, Insidious: The Last Key, come out January 5th of 2018. Formally known as Insidious: Chapter 4 and originally planned to release October 20th of 2017, The Last Key was directed by Adam Robitel and stars elderly Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier, Hana Hayes as a young Elise Rainier, and Leigh Whannell, known for his role as Adam in the first Saw film, as Specs. The budget for the movie was 10 million US dollars and made 92.6 million US dollars at the box office. Critics have been in between on how the film did. Harsher reviews come from sources like Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 30% freshness, IMDb giving it a 5.8/10, and Metacritic giving it a Metascore of 49%. Some of the better reviews were google users reporting 83% like this movie and Rotten Tomatoes audience gave it an average rating of 3.3/5.
Not many horror stories have an elderly female lead, making Lin Shaye’s Elise Rainier a special exception. The movie is about elderly Elise investigating the house she grew up in, as the evil that had once haunted her is back. It goes in between the past a the present (the present being around the time of Insidious 3) so it’s like a prequel with the flashbacks of Elise, and a sequel with the present day investigation. Basically, to hell with Chronological order, all the cool kids are scrambling it up. The protagonist is unique for an old lady, but what about the antagonist? Forget Freddy Krueger with his knife fingers, the main monster in this movie has keys for fingers, horrifying for those with kleidariaphobia.
Overall, it’s what you’d expect from an Insidious film. The director has had it a bit rough when it comes to horror movies, so it’s nice to see him doing a decent job with the last Insidious film. Some directors will drag a series down for profit, so it's nice seeing the Insidious franchise ending on a good note.