Insidious : Chapter 3

INSIDIOUS : CHAPTER 3



Director : Leigh Whannell

Year : 2015

Genre : Horror

Rating : **1/2

I walked in to 'Insidious : Chapter 3' with more than a fair amount of trepidation. After all, while I found the 2011 original mildly fun but highly derivative, I actively despised it's 2013 sequel - still the only movie to ever put me to sleep in the cinema. This time, the series writer Leigh Whannell moves into the directorial chair to tell the story of a young girl who, after becoming the victim of a terrible car accident, finds herself to be the target of an malevolent spirit. 

As is the case with every one of the movies in this franchise as well as almost every Blumhouse production, 'Insidious : Chapter 3' firmly sticks to the same clichéd jump scare tactics that made the previous two pictures so popular with non-horror audiences. Every scare is predictable and I would be lying if I said that this increasingly annoying trope didn't get under my skin at times. However, thanks to a number of strong performances (most notably from returning actress Lin Shaye), Whannells efficient direction, some incredibly creepy imagery and a pretty clever screenplay that just about ties the whole 'Insidious' saga together, 'Insidious : Chapter 3' actually turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining, if not extremely conventional romp that somewhat manages to live up to the often wasted potential of it's 2011 counterpart. It's all been done before and it's certainly not going to haunt your nightmares but when compared to what came before it, this is a vast improvement.