The first tick box I’ll address on this lengthy list of movie sins is that Insidious: Chapter 3 is misnamed. A more accurate title would be Insidious: The First Chapter or Insidious: The End of the Beginning. or Insidious: Unbelievably, The Shittiest One Yet. Chapter 3 implies the continuation of a story that began in chapters one and two. People who’ve read chapter books likely already know this fact. Unfortunately, it appears that the creators of this film weren’t privy to the vestige of knowledge contained within chapter books. Because outside of setting up a character whose appearance in the first Insidious movie also suspiciously marked its drastic dip in quality, this third chapter has absolutely nothing in common with the two that hit theaters before it. It’s like reading “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and then “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and then “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. Except Rowling intended for you to read it in that order.

So what’s this cinematic bumfire actually about? Ostensibly, it revolves around an aspiring theater student who, whilst attempting to reach out to her mother who’s recently passed – because Hollywood, and cancer – has accidentally invited a demonic force to latch onto her supple, tender chi chi. (Said demon is a wheezing, hairless entity who looks more like the patient in the burn victim wing than someone who poses an actual threat. Also, he waves?) In reality though, the film is nothing short of a montage of horror movie tropes, lazily slung at the screen, gearing to cull a rise from audiences overly willing to extent its limited scares credit. It moves purely on the power of people willing to give it credit where it’s undue and, if my audience was any indication, people’s capacity to do so are stunning.

Our screening – called in the press invitation, a “screamiere” – began on troublingly shaky footing with a PR moderated “scream off”. Ten contestants were brought up front to belt out their most piercing yelp in hopes of winning a $100 Visa gift card. Because fuck my life. From a mile away, I sniffed a bad precedent but didn’t anticipate just how much this publicity stunt would gear our audience into being as purposefully obnoxious as possible. And though this isn’t necessarily a fair criticism to lodge at the film itself, I can’t objectively parse my experience of it from the apparently dauntless crew of audience members projecting their “fear” with as much contrived gusto as they could summon. If there was a five second lapse in audience talking, screaming or laughing, I missed it.

As is the case with all bad scary movies, Insidious: Chapter 3‘s only frightful tactic is to insert something into the frame that isn’t supposed to be in frame. While the cinematography work from Brian Pearson employed periphery space to disquieting effect, director Leigh Whannell only has one trick up his sleeve and it’s one that we’ve seen a million times before. Beware, a shadowy figure lurks behind closed doors. Hands will grab you in the night. Ominous knocks will sound. Peeps be possessed up in this hizzouse.
.
There’s a moment when Stefanie Scott‘s Quinn Brenner (Scott is a very bad actress BTW) is trounced around her bedroom – legs bound in fiberglass casts, her neck encircled in a brace – where it seems like Whannell might shift gears away from his horribly self-serious posturing and into something more Drag Me to Hell-y. This is not the case. The best Whannel and his script can muster is Lin Shaye cattily calling a demon a “bitch” whilst shoving her and stomping. Because shoving is the primary weapon of demonologists. Our audience ate that one up like free chocolate popcorn on Marvel night.

TV veteran Dermot Mulroney attempts to give some depth to his blue collar character but there’s quite literally nothing to distinguish him from the masses of other “ahhh, my kid is haunted!” parental figures in the horror world. Sorely missing is Patrick Wilson, who gave the series some much, much needed credibility. Outside of Mulroney, the acting is on par with bad community theater. Shaye in particular is extraordinarily see-through; her performance is as transparent as Casper. Attempts to sew together connective tissue to the first two horrible movies in this horrible franchise result in script excerpts as impressively lazy as:

Sean Brenner: What is that place?
Elise Rainier: We’ll call it “The Further”.

Really? That’s how you came up with that stupid name for that stupid blue-lit place? By just calling it something stupid? Why not just call it “The Blumhouse Lot”? Ugh, I just can’t take it.

I would say the bloom is off the rose but that honor went out the window in the second act of the first film. Everything since Shaye walked through the door, this has been nothing short of one face-palming cliche after another. In case you’ve not figured this out already, I found Insidious: Chapter 3 to be atrocious. The Insidious franchise is quite easily the worst still running horror franchise and exactly the kind of horror movie that gives horror movies a bad name. And as a massive fan of the genre, this is nothing short of poison for its already corroded reputation. Without James Wan at least conducting the stinky symphony towards just one fleeting moment of clarity and tension, this third Insidious is an inception of failure: a Russian nesting doll of shite. Just when you think it can’t be any worse or any more predictable, it manages to amaze you. All in Pummel Me Blue lighting.