Elise Rainier has been one of the most fleshed out horror movie heroines of the modern era and I’ve enjoyed her quest throughout the “Insidious” series. After dying at the end of the first film, every subsequent film has backtracked to not only explore Elise more, but also give us a bigger wider bridge to the first film. “The Last Key” is perhaps the most personal quest featuring Elise as it does fit in to the general mythology of “The Further” but is more intimate and lower stakes. The movie can be seen more as a stand alone one shot featuring Elise in where she not only garnered full control of her powers, but also foresaw her fate in the first “Insidious.”
Brilliant parapsychologist Elise Rainier receives a disturbing phone call from a man who claims that his house is haunted. Even more disturbing is the address — 413 Apple Tree Lane in Five Keys, New Mexico — the home where Elise grew up as a child. Accompanied by her two investigative partners Specs and Tucker, Rainier travels to Five Keys to confront and destroy her greatest fear — the demon that she accidentally set free years earlier.
Like all films after the second “Insidious,” Adam Robitel’s installment is another prequel, but also a prequel of a prequel, in a sense. It’s kind of like the “Young Indiana Jones” of this series where Elise flashes back to her younger self experiencing these powers and ghosts, but also reconciling it with her present period. Ava Kolkier does a bang up job portraying a very young Elise who was grasping with her powers and was faced with a very abusive father and submissive mother. The dreams haunt her like the ghosts in the further, and she spends a lot of her time trying to decode what they mean.
Elise is called back to the house that she grew up in to investigate a potential haunting, and this sinks her in to a deep hole involving an abandoned prison, missing women, and a very vindictive ghost. Adam Robitel’s installment of “Insidious” is very good, but not exactly the best of the series at all. The whole affair feels very low stakes, and even when the screenplay hammers home a lot of the emotional weight, none of it ever elevates the narrative. Everything from Elise’s reunion with her long lost brother, to her bonding with her estranged nieces is under developed and sadly ignored for the most part. I would have loved a bigger focus on Elise coming to terms with her brother and their family’s history of abuse.
In either case, Lin Shaye is as great as ever and how can you not love her sidekicks Specs and Tucker? As always Leigh Whannell and Angus Simpson are hilarious and manage to relieve the film’s tension without turning the whole shebang in to a comedy. Their levity perfectly balances out Lin Shaye’s intensity amounting to such an underrated team of horror heroes. “The Last Key” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, as it is definitely suffering from script flaws, but I had a good time with it. I also get such a kick out of the goofy jump scares.