Review of Insidious: The Last Key (2018) by Cdougall — 12 Aug 2021

The Last Key is the first movie in the Insidious franchise that I dislike. This movie doesn’t add much to the franchise and the writing and direction aren’t great either. The dialogue is really cliche and corny at times which takes away from the effectiveness of some scenes, and the scares are very predictable and are a big letdown from what we got in Chapter 3.

Even the acting isn’t great at times which causes some moments in the movie to feel really awkward, though Lin Shaye gives another great performance as Elise Rainier. The story of The Last Key is an improvement from that of Chapter 3 and takes us even further into the past than Chapter 2 did by taking us through Elise’s childhood and her experiences as a young girl with her “gifts”.

This is nice as it gives even more depth and history to the franchise. The movie also does a good job of tying Elise’s past into the present in a way that makes sense and culminates decently in the movie.

It still has some elements of character stupidity, but not in way that we saw in Chapter 3 so that’s an improvement as well. There are also moments where the film ties into the previous ones in the franchise to give us big “ah-ha” moments that clarify stuff from those films.

For me, unfortunately, these are the only redeeming qualities of the movie. It feels like it was made as a bit of a cash grab for people who were big fans of the first three movies and excited for a fourth one, and feels like it doesn’t add too much to the franchise, either.

The Last Key should’ve been a spin-off movie about Elise and her past, because this franchise was founded on the Lambert family and it feels like it’s gone away from that and been distracted by telling other stories that only have some relevance to the Lambert family.

Chapter 3 was acceptable mostly because Specs and Tucker played big parts in Insidious 1 and 2 and Chapter 3 explained how Elise met them, so that gave us necessary context for 1 and 2. The Last Key gives us a lot of unnecessary context and it takes away from it’s ability to be a true part of the franchise.

That aside, there are just some bad moments in this movie, as I mentioned above, that hurt the quality of it and disrupt the flow. The twist regarding Ted Garza causes this movie to go way off the rails and is really unnecessary; I would rather have had the filmmakers do some cliche jump scare than do this.

Overall, for me, The Last Key is the worst installment in the Insidious franchise and shows that the people making these movies should really stick with the Lambert family and their story since that’s what made Insidious 1 and 2 as good as they were.