Insidious: The Last Key is the 4th installment in the series. This film is a prequel that tells the background story of the Elise Rainier (played by Lin Shaye), as she has played a crucial role in the previous films in helping families that are plagued by dangerous paranormal activity. We are shown Elise's childhood, growing up during the 1950's in New Mexico & the struggles of her coming to terms with her abilities. As the movie progresses, you gain more insight into her past in flashbacks while she winds up investigating the very home in which she grew up. Discoveries are made which connects what is currently happening to Elise's past.
While the series has never been anything historic in the annals of horror, I felt it was fairly solid as a series. By far the first film is the best of them all, as is common with most movie series. This has not changed after watching this latest (and hopefully final) film. This latest installment simply doesn't have much going for it.
Lets cover the positive first, it won't take long.....
By far, the only positive of this film is Lin Shaye's performance. As she has done in the previous films, her performance as the brave and kind psychic Elise Rainier is great. What was loved about her before is still very much present in this movie. Unfortunately that's the only thing Insidious: The Last Key has going for it. See? I told you that wouldn't take long.
When you have a movie in which the official trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acQyrwQyCOk is more interesting than the actual film, there is an obvious issue. Besides this, there is plenty in the trailer that IS NOT in the film. While I understand this isn't an uncommon thing to happen, this one seems to be particularly excessive and downright misleading.
The run time is 1 hour 43 minutes for this movie and I felt every second of it. It feels so much longer. The pacing of the movie just dragged for me and any of the reveals in the movie weren't worth the wait. Nothing felt original to this film as it's nothing you haven't seen before in the previous films. Everything just fell flat.
Elise's paranormal partners, Tucker (played by Angus Sampson) and Specs (played by Leigh Whannel) are back and I just found them annoying. More in this film than any of the other movies. Maybe that's because I just found the overall story weak in it's attempt to scare, shock or generate any real character development. Even the reveal of the main antagonist in the film fails to generate any scares or creep factor.
The rest of the characters in the movie are forgettable. While I didn't find the acting horrible nothing stood out to me with their performances. Since the overall story failed to intrigue me from the beginning, I think I simply gave up on taking the characters seriously.
To add to the tortuously slow pace, lack of originality and draining almost 2 hours from my life, there are things in the film that do not make sense. Like a head wound showing up on a character that has no reason to be there. The investigators looking for a bible that was obviously placed in a particular spot that has no reason not to still be there and it actually had no relevance to what was happening. Ugh, enough of this!
Summary: Even if you are a fan of the previous films, don't waste your time this movie. It is more or less a rehash of what you've seen before, just poorly done. I only hope it is truly The Last Key, and that key is lost forever.
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