Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
Directed by Leigh Whannell
A prequel set before the haunting of the Lambert family that reveals how gifted psychic Elise Rainier reluctantly agrees to use her ability to contact the dead in order to help a teenage girl who has been targeted by a dangerous supernatural entity.
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What critics compared Insidious: Chapter 3 to
For this installment, series writer and Saw creator Leigh Whannell takes over directorial duties from Hollywood darling James Wan (The Conjuring, Furious 7), whose sharp eye and evocative tableaux ensures the first films will always be a cut above their countless ripoffs.
Like last year’s subpar “The Conjuring” spinoff “Annabelle,” this direly routine ghost story marks a huge comedown in production values and performance quality from the series’ previous entries (which earned a combined $258 million worldwide), despite the presence of longtime Wan collaborator Leigh Whannell behind the camera and always game-faced elder scream queen Lin Shaye in front of it.
The writer of all three “Insidious” films — who also plays Specs — takes over the director’s chair from horror maestro James Wan (“The Conjuring”), moving Elise (Lin Shaye) and company a little bit more front and center.
Leigh Whannell steps in for James Wan—who directed the previous two and recently helmed The Conjuring and Furious 7— and does indeed take it some kind of other level, but he also forgets many of the lessons he and Wan learned on the previous two.
Last year, Annabelle tried to take the doll from the brilliant The Conjuring and give it its own origin.
From The Ring to The Conjuring and beyond, we’ve seen it all before.
This is Whannell’s second outing as director following 2015’s Insidious: Chapter 3, and Upgrade certainly feels self-assured in its visuals for a movie made on the kind of micro-budgets Blumhouse’s BH Tilt imprint is known for distributing.
I enjoyed Whannell’s work on his previous directorial effort, Insidious: Chapter 3, but Upgrade is truly his most ambitious film to date.
He made his own directorial debut with the solid sequel Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015), which elevated the Elise Rainier character played by the great Lin Shaye to a lead.
Whannell ( Insidious: Chapter 3 ) does quite a lot with very little.
With Upgrade, Whannell strikes out on his own with his first truly original concept as a writer-director—his previous directorial effort, Insidious: Chapter 3 , followed up on a franchise launched by Wan from Whannell’s own screenplay—in a film whose production is as ambitious as its story is formulaic.
Whannell has always had a knack for discovering terrific genre hooks in his films (he co-created the Saw and Insidious franchises before graduating to director on Insidious: Chapter 3).
Also making notable impressions: Carrie-Anne Moss (2014's " Pompeii ") as Detective Shaw, yearning to uncover a secret Elliot makes clear she should never know; reliable scene-stealer Cleo King (2014's " Transformers: Age of Extinction ") as librarian Ms. Watkins, who assists Elliot in his research; Leigh Whannell (2015's " Insidious: Chapter 3 "), whose unhinged newspaper journalist Larry Redmon kicks off the film with a frightening jolt, and screen legend Faye Dunaway (2002's " The Rules of Attraction ") as Larry's widow, carrying with her the terrible memories of the fateful day she lost her husband."The…
But, as with a number of other horror series on the market–Paranormal Activity, Grave Encounters, etc.–it’s the film’s adherence to its own undercooked mythology that proves to be its undoing.
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Dermot Mulroney's (2015's " Insidious: Chapter 3 ") part asks that he have nothing to do except run around in the third act with a half-dozen penises drawn on his face.