Before Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth film in the horror franchise conjured up by the masterful pair of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, rears its spooky head, the best way to binge-watch the Insidious movies is to see them in a reverse order. Meaning – start with Insidious 3, then Insidious 2 before ending with the first flick. This is because at the ripe young age of 74, Lin Shaye, playing the plucky psychic medium-para psychologist, Elise Rainier, with the ability to contact the dead, is the breakout star of the series.
The reverse chronology of watching the series is due to a little inconvenient detail – Shaye's Elise was killed off right at the end of the original Insidious. So, Insidious producers have to look for younger actresses who resemble Shaye to play Elise in flashbacks and prequels before showcasing the in-demand Shaye herself. In the new upcoming Insidious prequel, The Last Key, there will apparently be not one, but two, younger versions of Elise. In each instalment, Elise, warns the victims hounded by terrifying spooks about a dark dimension called “The Further” where evil demons and spirits converge waiting to possess living people to take over their bodies to invade our world. “If you call out to one of the dead, all of them can hear you,” she cautions one stricken girl. Unluckily for the victims, they do not listen. Luckily for horror fans, we get to see their chilling predicaments.
Insidious (2010)
Directed by: James Wan
Written by: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson
Teacher Josh Lambert (Wilson), his songwriter wife Renai (Byrne) and their three young kids move into a new isolated home with all the trappings of the Big Haunted House where ominously dark shadows lurk. It has many rooms, dimly lit hallways, blind spots, nooks, corners and a spooky attic where one son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), suffers a fall from a ladder. The boy slips into a coma which leads to a number of sinister spirits – a scary old woman wearing a veil, red-faced demon, long-haired dude, scampering kid – showing up to harm the family, especially the homebound Renai. While her husband is off to work, she bears the brunt of the hauntings which go from a piano playing creepily by itself to glimpses of terrifying apparitions to full-fledged spook attacks. When even moving to a new house does not stop the spirits, the family seeks help from a gentle-looking psychic medium, Elise Rainier (Shaye), and her two comic-relief ghostbusters-style paranormal tech assistants, Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Sampson).
Elise, who can contact the dead, tells the afflicted couple that their comatose son, Dalton, has the ability to astral-travel into a dark and frightening parallel dimension of dead spirits, “The Further”, and become a vessel for them. Then, things get very interesting from here. Insidious became a huge hit grossing US$97 million out of a US$1.5 million budget and that of course, warrants a sequel.
Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
Directed by: James Wan
Written by: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson
Following the death of Elise the medium at the house of the Lamberts in the first film, suspicion falls on Josh as her killer with even the still-spooked Renai thinking that her hubby is guilty since he continues to behave strangely. No one, of course, knows that Daddy has already been possessed by his stalker demon – an evil spine-chilling woman, Michelle Crane (Danielle Bisutti), dressed in a white bridal outfit. As the paranormal attacks continue and the now medium-less Laurel-and-Hardy tech pair of Specs and Tucker probe further, Josh's mother, Lorraine (Hershey), tells the story in flashbacks about how Josh as a boy encountered an elderly male patient named Parker Crane in a hospital. The patient was a notorious serial killer, known as the Bride In Black, who was cruelly abused as a child by his dramatically over-the-top mad mother – the woman in white – who made him wear little girls' dresses.
So, basically, in this Insidious prequel, there are two principal, sufficiently grotesque spooks – the woman in bridal white and the man in a black bridal dress – which leave both the audience and the poor terrified wife, Renai, quite confused. Suffice it to know that the only thing the viewer needs to understand is that once again, everything can only be resolved in the perpetually dark, lantern-lit spirit dimension of “The Further” which the living enter to battle the dead to reclaim their possessed bodies back.
Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
Directed by: James Wan
Written by: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Lin Shaye, Dermot Mulroney, Stefanie Scott, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson
Set some years before the unholy trouble at the Lamberts which led to her death, this proper prequel sees a still-alive-and-kicking Elise helping an entirely different family that is similarly plagued by sinister demons. A sad teenager, Quinn Brenner (Stefanie Scott), missing her departed mom dearly, engages the reluctant psychic medium to contact her. Elise, herself, is in a deep funk due to the death of her husband Jack while fearing that her gift in summoning the dead has made her a target for an unknown malevolent spirit out to kill her. She warns Quinn not to meddle with the “unliving’. But it is all too late as the kid finds herself attacked by a vicious spirit wearing an oxygen mask in a hospital gown.
It does not help that Quinn, her helpless father, Sean (Mulroney), and kid brother reside in an old-school apartment building bowelled with ornate hotel-type corridors which look like they have been borrowed from The Shining. Turning to a pair of self-described paranormal experts – Specs and Tucker – for help, Dad finds out that they are a pair of hokey scammers just before the real deal, Elise, arrives to save the day.
