R15 - Film Review: Insidious 3

The third part to an exhilarating horror film attracts most kind of audiences from youngsters to even adults with much more important things to do. Continuing on from the sequel, creating the third film was a lot more challenging in the ways they had to keep the audiences engaged and make it worth while as they did for the first and second. Yet, some audiences may believe it was a better film than both, as well as nowhere near compared to the others. 

Starting off with a young wannabe actor, Quinn Brenner, she appears at the door of the recently retired, Elise, in hope that she could help her make contact with her late mother, who died of cancer. She tells Quinn to take a seat after she is refused more than 10 times because Elise had retired from any sort of job. 

Elise urges Quinn from trying to contact the dead on her own. She tells her, "Do not do this yourself. If you call out to one of the dead, all of them can hear you". However predictably, it is almost obvious that Quinn will do it anyway. This is where the main plot begins and makes the audience eager to see what it is she'll do next. 

Quinn returns home disappointed and still believes that 'someone wants to talk to her, who is not here anymore'. So, she attempts connecting to her mother on her own. She starts speaking to the walls and starts calling her mum, could she actually make contact with the dead? Here, the audience was expecting see some sort of contact with the dead but as she didn't, the audience expect a much more larger scare for when she does. 

It is during her audition that she sees a figure waving out at her that distracts her focus. Later, whilst walking on the road towards her friend's car, she is again distracted by this figure and this distraction leads to an accident, completely shocking the audience and leaving her wheelchair bound with fractured legs. 

The settings of the film are more of a horror drama as opposed to a conventional horror film. The pace of the film initially is quite relaxed and it is very slow, however once it builds up gradually, more things start to happen which makes it more interesting for the audience. The film picks up pace once Elise finally returns from her psychic retirement and enters the realms of the other plane, "The Further," to save Quinn. 

The sound effects as well as the production quality of the film are average for a typical horror film, yet at certain times like when Quinn suffers a car crash, that the sound becomes most significant when mirroring what occurs on screen. The diegetic sound effects of the crash and the glass shattering is key, which the producers managed to get spot on in creating a whirlwind of an accident.

The mise-en-scene of the location and lighting played a huge aspect of this film. Th settings were conventional to the gothic genre of a creepy dark building but also had settings of reality, such as a cluttered apartment, and places we are accustom to in our every day life. This is probably why is scared the audience more, than if it was constantly in an eerie setting. The fact that all these horror events were occuring in a normal place alerts the audience for when they're by themselves, as it almost makes it seem like these ghosts can appear from anywhere, if you're watching the film. Similarly, the lighting was also used to it's full advantage. At night in the apartment, the lighting was very dim, almost making it hard to see clearly. Thus, this enhanced the horror quotient and added to the viewing experience.

As a whole, personally, I thought the film was a tad disappointing. With high expectations created from the previous films, I had in mind that the film could potentially be a copy of the previous, however I think the producers had created a first and second film better compared to the third. Even though the film had a few effectively well-times jump scares, the film overall was a let down for what members of the audience like myself, were expecting.