The Insidious universe is one that I’ve always been able to get behind. We horror fans may think we’re being bombarded with remakes now, but in 2010, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Predators, Let Me In, I Spit On Your Grave, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Mother’s Day, The Wolfman, Pirahna 3D, and The Crazies all came out in the same year. By the time Insidious came along, I was just happy to watch a movie where I didn’t know what was going to happen. But it was so much more than mere originality. While its competitors went for an overabundance of CGI, gore, and jump scares, Insidious opted for a slower, more aloof menacing spirit that followed you home from the theater, and crept up on you in your dreams. James Wan’s casual, familiar ’70s retro style felt so fresh and new at a time when films were in a shouting match for attention that it stood out by simply being the quietest one in the room. In its softness, it forced us to pay attention, and once it had us focused and vulnerable, it pounced, and scared all of us back under our covers. The Insidious franchise gets back to what ghost stories are supposed to be about: spooky, ominous hallways, and the creatures that lurk in them.

In Insidious: Chapter 3, we start with a fresh new set of faces, with a plot that takes place years before the Lambert family affair. In the film, we begin with Quinn and Sean Brenner, who have much more on their plate than they can handle. An aspiring actress, Quinn is a talented young lady, and fully capable of getting into the prestigious art school that’s caught her eye…if only her demanding father would ease up on the pressure. Mrs. Brenner passed a little over a year ago, leaving Sean in a panic, desperately shifting the stress to his teenage daughter. He relies on Quinn to help raise her younger brother, Alex, but dealing with school applications, keeping her grades up, and the added adult responsibility on top of all of her grief is just too much for such a young person to handle. Sean thinks that by replacing his late wife with his teenage daughter, he can make things just like they used to be, and achieve some sense of normality again. Unfortunately, the harder he pushes her to fit into this mature role, the more she rebels against it, and resents him for his attempts. However, when a distracted Quinn is crucially injured in an automobile accident, she sinks down into a deeper emptiness than she could have ever imagined. She’s not sure what this strange place is called, but once she gathers consciousness, she begins to realize that something might have followed her back home from this endless sea of darkness. Something sinister and scheming is after Quinn…something that will inevitably make her pay for her brief trip into the further.

Starting out a film with the death of a family member is a tricky beast. From the onset of the story, the people within its confines are established as broken characters, and every action, every word spoken from that point onward must be one that an afflicted person would commit. People who have witnessed tragedy, especially when the pain is recent and still fresh, experience and respond to events differently than others who have not felt the same level of sadness. Therefore, if a writer establishes characters by grounding their identity in grief, that grief should follow them around for the entirety of their journey, and overshadow, or least greatly impact, the plot that follows. This is where Insidious: Chapter 3 struggles to become a fully fleshed out, complete picture; falling just short of the masterpiece it could have been; settling instead for a shadow of its original intentions.

Inside of Insidious: Chapter 3 is the terrific, well-rounded film that might have been. Quinn lost her mother, as did her father, and now, they are stuck dealing with the emotions in the wake of such enormous change. At the same time, Sean and Quinn are experiencing paranormal activity as “the man who can’t breathe” torments them with its presence. In a way, one stands as a metaphor for the other; Quinn’s accidental trip into the further paralleling her descent into grief, and the man who followed her back symbolizing her inability to let go of her mother. Everyday that she spends stuck in the past, trying to reach her mother through supernatural means, is another day that she spends lost; engulfed in the grief; i.e. the further. Quinn is weak, and vulnerable, and as her sadness and her passiveness grows, she withers away, mentally and physically, as the man who can’t breathe takes a little piece of her soul with every sleep. Her father, to, loses his grip on his baby girl a little more each time she drifts away from him and towards depression; towards the emptiness of the further. Quinn must give up her mother and get away from the further to go into the land of light and hard reality and be a complete person among her peers, not just for her sake, but for her father’s, too.

It’s a shame that this metaphor was not more prominently capitalized on, but truth be told, this finale to the Insidious trilogy is still delightfully entertaining, and a creepy, fun ending to the trilogy. This is especially true considering the fact that many third entries in franchises are downright awful. It’s impossible to reach the level of fear that the first Insidious brought us because it came out of left field. Audiences were so immersed in remakes, that Insidious carried with it an air of mystery, leaving much to the imagination until the finale of the film. By the time we get to the third installment, five years later, in 2015, we know the rules of the further, and all that’s really left to explore are the demons and spirits within it. I would have preferred to have spent more time watching the breakdown of the character of “the man who can’t breathe”, and less rehashing of the familiar rules of the further, but I couldn’t help but enjoy the ride. The Insidious series is one that has issues, like any other horror franchise, but it’s also eerie, and disturbing, and always leaves a haunting little sense of dread for days after a viewing. Composer Joseph Bishara’s impact on these films cannot be understated, of course, but Leigh Whannell is the true source of the films; the root from which James Wan became a household name. Watching him take the reigns is well worth the ride.