Insidious: The Last Key is fourth installment in series

Thrilling franchise should die out after latest film release

Within certain horror movies, it seems as if some monsters just won’t go away, especially if these monsters keep providing Hollywood and film producers copious amounts of money.

“Insidious: The Last Key” is the fourth film in the successful insidious franchise. The latest installment is a prequel of sort that revolves around psychic and leading lady Elise Rainier as she fights a new demon from the further.

Director Adam Robitel carries on the Insidious series after the previous director of the series, James Wan, decided to take on a different project. Robitel has impressed audiences and critics alike with his directorial debut in the 2014 possession film “The Taking of Deborah Logan.”

In the new insidious film, Robitel proves to have a knack for creating some great horror atmosphere and some stunning imagery. Unfortunately, this alone does not make the newest film worth the price of admission.

The chronology of the Insidious series is a little bit confusing. The newest movie is a sequel to “Insidious Three” which was a prequel to “Insidious One” and “Two.”

This movie centers around the psychic Elise (Lin Shaye) and her sidekicks Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell). The three of them are paranormal investigators who personally help anyone who reports to be living with a ghost or demon.

Elise gets a call from a man who lives in Five Keys, New Mexico who is experiencing intense demonic hauntings in his recently bought home. However, the house that this man now lives in is the childhood home of Elise.

The film frequently flashes back to Elise’s difficult past in this house with her abusive father where she discovered her power of communicating and seeing demons and ghosts. During her childhood in this house, she accidentally unleashed a powerful demon named Key Face (yeah, I know kind of a stupid name), who is the antagonist of this film. After returning home after 50 years Elise must face her demons from the past both literally and figuratively.

As far as most fourth installments in horror franchises go, this one is not terrible. However; it is still not good by any means. The biggest downfall for this movie is just how unnecessary it feels. The story or character is not intriguing enough to have any audience member really care about what is going to happen.

Another major flaw this movie has is its script and the acting. The dialogue is very unrealistic and cliche and with the cheesy acting, it actually caused a lot of unintentional laugh out loud moments in the theatre I was in.

Some of the worst parts of this movie come from the sidekick characters Tucker and Specks. These characters are supposed to be the comic relief of this movie, but almost everything they say is so unfunny that it is actually cringe-worthy. I have never hated characters in a movie as much as this since Jar Jar Binks in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.”

On a bright side, the creature design for Key Face is very impressive and quite frightening looking, but this can get weighed down by an overabundance of jump scares and lack of logic behind this antagonist besides just to look scary.

Lin Shaye, who plays Elise, does do a good job with her character and is putting her all into the performance. The backstory and the flashbacks of Elise are probably the highlights from this movie. There are a couple scenes between Elise and Key Face that are truly intense and suspenseful.

Overall, “Insidious: The Last Key” is not good, but it’s watchable. This is definitely the worst movie in the franchise, but the Insidious franchise is still a lot better than most other long-running horror franchises like “Saw”.