Reloading - Insidious 3: Elise's Story

It’s another Monday and time for another Reloading. This week we’re gonna get a little scary while we talk about Insidious 3. Enjoy! 

At this point I can’t tell what scares me more. The fact that horror franchises continue to get milked, ultimately leaving them to lose their teeth and become less interesting or scary with each installment. Or how many films director James Wan is going to spew out to theaters in a single year. Seriously, almost all the trailers I saw when watching Insidious 3 had his named attached to the production. It’s like he has nothing better to do now that SAW isn’t wasting his time with more yearly sequels.

Insidious 3 is the third movie in the franchise, but it’s actually a prequel, taking place before anything else. The story kind of focuses on Elise, but it’s about the young woman who brings her back into the psychic line of work, Quinn Brenner. Quinn has tried to contact her mother in the Spirit World. (And yes, I’m aware that it’s referred to as “The Further” or “The Other Side” or several other billion names. I’m just going to default to spirit world for those who aren’t familiar with the series). The problem when trying to contact the dead is that sometimes you’ll get others to answer your call. A concept that was shown off in films like Ouija already.

In this case, Quinn has accidentally contacted an asshole demon. The first thing it does is get her in a car accident in the most asshole way. Then it stalks her, constantly assaulting and tormenting her in her own home (like most dark spirits and demons do). While all this is going on, Elise can sense something dark at work. But due to her fear of being killed by the psycho-woman from the first and second Insidious films, she doesn’t jump back into the brawl right away. She eventually gets consul from another psychic, who convinces her that she needs to use her gift for good and that she’s more powerful than that demon spirit that threatens her life.

This leads to a “final battle” scenario in which Elise, with the aid of some amateur online ghost hunters Quinn’s father hired, enters “The Further” to find the rest of Quinn’s soul that’s been taken by this demon, and return it to the material world. She faces her own personal demons, and overcomes the dark trial before her from the “Man who can’t breathe” who, for the purposes of this review, I’m going to call “Wheezer.” There’s the happily ever after moment because Elise’s mission is successful and Quinn’s mom does eventually return to give her some parting words and aid during the final rescue operation.

While the plot isn’t really bad in any way, it’s kind of standard demonic horrors affair, so it doesn’t really feel like anything new. You have the cliché dad who doesn’t believe in this demon crap having to realize he’s wrong and change his mind last minute. You have the cliché protagonist who calls the wrong spirit and gets suckered into a possession-like scenario. You have the goofy characters who bumble things up, but join the Elise-Squad at the end, giving you the origin story of their team up. We also get shout outs to the first film that are largely unnecessary because they really don’t make a whole lot of sense unless you’ve seen the first films. Here they just feel like weird shit happening for the sake of weird shit happening.

My biggest problem is that the story is mostly focused on the origin of Elise, or at least how she gets back into the spirit-world-business. Why? Because the movie ceases to be scary then. We know she has to survive to the end or else the other two movies can’t have happened. We know that she likely has to be successful. Otherwise she’d just quit the job again, refusing to do the job in the first two films that take place later. The mere fact we’re in prequel territory removes all the teeth from this film, leaving nothing but a slew of jump scares.

I’m going to go ahead and say it. I don’t like jump scares. And I don’t mean that in the sense that they scare me and I don’t like them. I merely think they’re a cheap way of generating scares from something that isn’t actually scary. There isn’t a lingering sense of dread. There isn’t anything really creepy. It’s just a pop-out book with monsters that we ultimately know won’t win because, again, prequel. I want the monsters and demons to be what scares me. I want the creepy things they do to scare me or what I think they’ll do. I don’t want a bunch of cheap jump scares because those aren’t really scary.

The villain, while effectively creepy looking, paled in comparison to the lipstick-demon from the first film. In fact, I still think the first film is really the best one because it was still the creepiest one with so many “unknowns” happening, allowing us to fill in the gaps with our own spooky ideas to scare ourselves with. It also had less reliance on jump scares. And its father-character was a significantly better actor along with most of that first family. And, honestly, I’m not enough of a fan of Elise that I wanted to know where she came from. When first seeing the trailers, I was hoping she was doing the spirit-work with her team as a spirit after the events of the first two films, helping young psychics figure out the dangerous world of the paranormal. That sounded like a much more interesting film. Not a prequel about a family who ultimately isn’t that interesting.

Breaking it down, yes, I’ve seen less interesting horror films than Insidious 3, but at the end of this film, I’m ultimately not left with a lingering sense of dread. I’m not getting spooked by dark rooms or wondering if I’m being watched. In short, I feel it failed in its job to actually scare me, meaning it has also failed as a horror film. The plot (origin of Elise) is fine enough, but unless you’re a fan of the series, again, specifically of Elise, there won’t be much for you. But since I wasn’t invested in Elise, I didn’t find that compelling, and such a plot kills the horror factor anyway because the tension of “will she live?” is entirely gone. So unless you are a fan of the series, I honestly can’t recommend Insidious 3. Instead, just watch the first film three times and maybe the second one, like, once. That should satisfy your need to see another Insidious. Or, I’d hope it would at least.

That’s all for this week’s Reloading. I hope you enjoyed the review. And if so, please consider liking, sharing, subscribing, or even commenting. Don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel if you get the time and we’ll be back soon with more Reloading for you.