In 2010, audiences tiptoed through the tulips with the Lambert family as jealous outside forces tugged on their happiness, and flocked to the innocence that their son, Dalton, radiated. Elise and her gang of paranormal experts lent a hand in banishing the red-faced demon from the Lambert’s home, but in 2013, the family became the target of yet another supernatural entity. This time, it was the father, Josh, whose life source the evil spirits craved, but through the help of an old friend found in ‘the further’, Josh was able to turn off his astral projection and safely return to the loving arms of his wife and children. In 2015, familiarity has been abandoned, as viewers are thrust into a similar state of fear, but this time, with a whole new family in Insidious: Chapter 3 (review). Quinn Brenner recently lost her mother, not to malevolent otherworldly presences, but to the cruel common hands of mortality, as breast cancer claimed her life. Quinn, her brother, and her father Sean have been doing their best to keep their heads above water since the sudden absence, but the pain over losing a parent, the pressures of oncoming adulthood, and being forced into playing the substitute mom have left Quinn feeling less like a person and more like an empty shell as of late.

Leigh Whannell and James Wan have been partners ever since the very first Saw film hit theaters and made audiences squirm, continuing their partnership throughout the entire Insidious franchise, with Whannell writing all three installments. However, the third entry marks not only the first Insidious movie that Whannell has directed, but his first directorial debut for a feature length film, period. Although he did not know that he would be the one sitting in the director’s chair for Chapter 3, Whannell claims that a sense of ownership was born with the third entry. “As I was writing Insidious 3 I started to fall in love with the characters and the story,” Whannell excitedly recalls, “I became very possessive of it and I didn’t want someone else to do it. So, it was really the script that chose me, that grabbed me, and dragged me into that job”. As Whannell begins his first stretch of directing the franchise, a fresh new Brenner family emerges, providing Whannell with a clean slate full of unsuspecting characters: “One of the most crucial aspects of a haunted house movie is the fear and disbelief of the characters, because they don’t know what’s happening to them. Once the characters are familiar with hauntings it kind of dilutes that”. Lucky for Whannell, the Brenners have no idea what’s about to hit them.

Distressed, but hopeful, Quinn pays a visit to a well-known psychic in the hopes of connecting with her late mother, and finding some sense of closure that might help her move on. However, when she knocks on the stranger’s door asking for help, it is Elise who hides on the other side of the frame, reluctant to delve into the afterlife that too has claimed someone she loves. Elise’s husband took his own life not long ago, and since then, Elise has ignored her gift. While neglecting those who seek her aid, she hides out in her house engulfed in her sorrow, clutching the sweater of her lost loved one in a desperate attempt to hang on to some remnant of his being. “The two lead women of the film, they’re at such different points in their life, like they’re both strong women they are looking at life from a different angle” explains writer/director Leigh Whannell. “You know, Quinn’s seventeen years old, and she’s about to start her life, she’s at this crossroads, whereas Lin starts off the film feeling really closed off and dead, and they sort of meet each other in the middle, and give strength to each other”. Despite beginning on the opposite ends of the spectrum, with Quinn blossoming into adulthood, and Elise withering away, it is their mutual sadness that unites the two characters, and brings them together to meet in the middle and pull each other back to stability. Even Quinn’s father feels the weight of the loss heavy on his heart, and through the course of the film, digs his way out of despair and back to a healthier state of mind. “The theme of Insidious 3 is really loss and grieving, and what brings all three of these characters together, you know, Stefanie Scott and Dermot Mulroney’s characters together, and what brings Elise out of herself, is that they are all experiencing the same emotional experience” reflects Godmother of horror star Lin Shaye, “I think it’s a beautiful unifying element that makes the story unfold in a really great way where you learn about these three people at the same time”.

After Elise tries and fails to call out to Quinn’s mother, and refuses to try again, Quinn attempts to reach her mother on her own, unknowingly attracting a much more sinister spirit in the process, who claims Quinn’s essence for himself. In the third installment, ‘the further’ takes on a whole new meaning, as the vast empty space that collects Quinn piece by piece pulls her deep into its darkness, paralleling her sorrow over her mother that eats away at her a little more each day.”They’re all sort of stored, their own grief basically kept them prisoner” Whannell interprets, “we sort of literalize that thought, now she’s literally being held prisoner in this world”. While some supernatural films stick to surface level scares, Whannell chooses not to settle for less, and searches instead for a deeper meaning for this tale of haunting. “I feel like if you boil supernatural ghost films down to their core essence, they’re really about death” explains Whannell, noting that unlike some other Hollywood films, he wants audiences to feel the pangs of real loss, “it’s dealt with in entertainment so flippantly. James Bond, he kills a bad guy, we don’t think twice about it, but in real life, death impacts us forever”. Although it is important to Whannell to create a fun, frightening horror movie, he also wants to leave an emotional mark on his viewers. “I kind of wanted to broach both those camps. I wanted to deal with the ghosts and the stuff that audiences expect from a horror film, but I did want to deal with the themes of death”. In creating a more impactful story about the afterlife, Whannell went on to explain that in the newest chapter in the series, “the further represents this sort of black cloud of grief that comes with death”. The further acts not only as a metaphor for Quinn’s grief, but Elise’s, as well, as the once happy and vibrant medium now sits quietly in the darkness of her closed off home, away from the sunshine and livelihood that animates the world outside of her walls.

Surprisingly, one of the most exciting aspects of Insidious: Chapter 3 is not Quinn’s journey, but Elise’s, as she morphs from lethargic widow to unlikely hero. “It’s usually some hot young girl or some really cute guy, or some, I don’t know what, but certainly not Elise,” Shaye states proudly about her unique character, “Not this middle aged, motherly, encroaching on old woman. But there’s something wonderful about the place she has in the series, and in the franchise”. Indeed, calling on wiser, more seasoned characters to come in and save the day is a concept that seems lost on modern day audiences, as studios toss out movie after movie with plastic carbon copies of young, flawless heroes that always manage to get the job done without getting a single scratch on them. Elise is a callback to the forgotten, more experienced saviors of the past; the ones who have been through hell and lived to tell the tale, like Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, or Peter Vincent in Fright Night. Like her predecessors, Elise proves to be one of the most vital components in the story, and a necessary guide for her more naive counterpart. Of course, without filling the absent mother role for Quinn, Elise would not be pushed to rise above her depression. “She takes on this surrogate mother role and I think she can see that void in Quinn’s life because she’s psychic” notes Whannell. “She can instantly tap into a bunch of things that maybe your average person can’t. So, when she sits down with her in the opening scene, I think she instantly feels maternal towards her because she can feel that loss”. Hopefully, Quinn takes advantage of her newfound aid, and finds the strength within herself to move on from her past, and escape the darkness, lest she and the rest of the Brenner family be forever lost in the eerie, foggy depths of the further, wandering its dimly lit halls for all eternity.