After quite enjoying 'Insidious: Chapter 3' I figured, with it being Halloween, and with me having a whole day to fill with movies, it made sense to give ONE more entry a go, as it'd mean the next 2 entries can be part of next years 'watches'. SO! I picked up 'The Last Key' for a spin and…Yeah! It's…basically just more of the same!
The plot this time picks up a short time after the events of 'Chapter 3' its 2010 and Elise is having horrifying night terrors back to her childhood, where its revealed she was in an abusive family with a mother who cared about her and knew about her 'powers' and wanted to nurture them. And a Father who refused to believe they existed and tried to beat Elise into behaving.
When a call comes in for the gang from New Mexico, its revealed to eb coming from non other than the current owner of Elises childhood home, with claims of ghosts and demonic presences swarming the place. Elise initially refuses to take the case, but eventually, reluctantly realises that this is a job for her and her alone…Only her new team make a point of coming along to help…because it's Elise man…c'mon! Anyway! I cant really say all that much past this point without spoiling major chunks of the film, but needless to say, theres twists, turns, and somehow EVEN HIGHER stakes than the previous films. As Elise challenges the demons of her past and reconnects with the ghosts of her present.
And…As I suggested in the opening of this review. the quick caption summary for this film is basically 'If you liked 'Chapter 3'…Well, heres more of it!' Across all boards, its basically that. And I wish I had more to say than that really, but thats kind of where im up to. I think if push came to shove, I'd lean more towards 'Chapter 3' being the stronger entry of the two. But thats purely down to the fact that 'Chapter 3' can stand up fully on its own, whereas this entry does require you to be vaguely aware of some of the plot points from the last film in order to be fully appreciated.
Otherwise, The plots relatively solid, the plot twists are actually pretty decent, with at least one reveal genuinely catching me off guard. The pacing moves at a clip, the tone once again contrasts rather bleak subjects with some nice surface level humour, which I think works well, the act structuring is solid and the characters here are AS solid and well handled as the previous entry, if not a little more 'shored up' because they have the last film to work off as a sping pad.
Direction and cine wise, its pretty much the standard for horror at this point, but where I do think this excels over 'Chapter 3' is that it does feel a bit bigger budgeted in terms of the effects. I feel the film leans more into letting the budget work for the story its trying to tell, and I enjoy that way the cine and editing works around the disjointed timelines this series has been bouncing around with since the last film.
The performances are as solid as the last film, and again I find myself utterly enthralled by Lin Shaye in this, who probably gets the meatiest of scripts to work with out of the entire franchise. Here not only dealing with the grief of processing her childhood abuse, but of the revelations in her life in the present, she so effortlessly bounces between emotions, scenarios and situations, its a genuine delight to see her performance in this, and once again, her performance here is pretty much worth the price of admission sheerly by itself.
And, the soundtracks kind of a moot point at this point…we're 4 entries in and I dont think I can say anything more than 'I cannot deal with droning, uninteresting ambient horror music anymore. and while there is some interesting sound editing present here. Its really not enough to pull me back from saying that this scores just kind of dull.
All in all? This franchise is really growing on me. Especially with the last two entries, and once again, I'd say this is a film thats definitely worth your time in checking out, my only advice would be to make sure you've seen 'Chapter 3' before checking this one out, just so your fully up to speed with everything going on within these characters worlds. Otherwise, this is a great and fun little Horror sequel, that I wont say is exactly 'groundbreaking' or 'revolutionary'. But is a damn stable addition to a damn stable series…and I can really only hope it continues to be so into the next 2 entries.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/insidious-the-last-key/
