The first three INSIDIOUS movies, INSIDIOUS (2010), INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 (2013), and INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 (2015) are excellent, all effectively eerie and creepy, with the first two using an economy of demonic imagery compared to a heavier, more sensationalistic use of such evil beings throughout THE CONJURING series. While CHAPTER 3 eventually leads to having more scenes with a particularly ugly demon, these come across as relevant to the story and troubled mental state of one of the main characters, a teenaged female (Stefanie Scott) rendered vulnerable to a demonic spirit attachment after the death of her mother and then nearly dying from being hit by a car. In a nutshell, these screenplays are about astral travel and encountering demon spirits and very disturbed human ghosts while doing so. INSIDIOUS ends on a cliffhanger, with INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 picking right up where its prequel left off.
The first two movies cover the travails of the Lambert family, comprising a husband and wife (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), their three children (Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor, and Brynn and Madison Bowie taking turns playing the infant daughter), and the husband’s mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey). The oldest child, Dalton (Simpkins), has the ability to astral travel while sleeping, which, during the first film, results in him entering a comatose-like state for three months as his astral body wanders about, stuck in the astral/spirit plane, referred to here as the “Further.” Lorraine enlists the help of her old friend Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), who is a seasoned psychic medium and expert astral traveler. From there, the true work begins to retrieve Dalton’s astral body and reunite it with his physical one, and to detach Dalton from a malevolent ghost that haunts him and his family, even after they move into another home. The second screenplay focuses on Dalton’s father, Josh (Wilson), becoming strangely troubled due to certain happenings in INSIDIOUS.
In all three of these films, the emphasis on closeups of actors’ facial reactions, mysterious physical disturbances in houses and other buildings, and brief startle moments of demons and disturbed ghosts suddenly appearing make each screenplay suspenseful, riveting, and poignant. Again, to me, these are all better than the more special effects-filled and campy THE CONJURING movies.
This third installment, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3, is a prequel to the first two. I appreciate how Elise (powerfully played by Lin Shaye), a woman in her sixties, is the actual heroine here and in the fourth movie, INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY (2018), which I review separately in a blog post following this one. She is understandably conflicted with fear and grief, which eventually gets explained in the third and fourth films. However, Elise is also kick ass in her role of facing off ugly demons and mean ghosts who haunt the living. She is particularly showcased in CHAPTER 3 and in THE LAST KEY, which I found refreshing and satisfying, since older women tend to often be sidelined in this and other movie genres, their own personal stories rendered less important than those of other, younger characters.
These first three screenplays are all emotionally moving, as is the fourth one, which is often even more so, I found. Two young men (Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson) play a relievingly comical duo of nerdy, geeky ghost hunters in each of the productions, teaming up with Elise for the first time in CHAPTER 3, the backstory of this plot thread presented both amusingly and sweetly. The trio make for quirky, likable characters as they help people communicate with their dead loved ones and become energetically, emotionally unattached from demons or malevolent ghosts from the astral and spirit realm (the Further). The immediacy and thoughtfulness conveyed through actor and writer Leigh Whannell’s script writing and the entire cast’s solid acting make for high quality on-screen horror that often had me thinking how astral travel and coming upon ghosts and demons could all really happen.
The Practical, Fanciful Pagan 