What Made INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY So Forgettable?

[00:00:00]I've been revisiting the Insidious franchise over the last few months and well I hadn't seen some of them in a number of years. I think the one that I've been the most curious to take another look at is The Last Key, the fourth chapter of the franchise which released in 2018, 3 years after the third chapter took things back around before the first film took place. Why?

[00:00:19]Ask Key why. Why? Ask Key why. What was it about this one that made me more intrigued to give it another watch out of all of these?

[00:00:28]Well, frankly it's because I quite literally could not remember a single thing about Insidious: The Last Key. I recalled that it got into Elise's childhood and that we went to her childhood home, but that is quite literally the only thing that stuck in my head. I do seem to remember being pretty tired when I saw it back around the time it came out, but still that was raising some questions for me as I've built up to checking it out again. I'm a fan of this franchise. The first two movies were a big deal for me in my early teens. I may not enjoy the third one as much as I did back when it came out, but I still think it's pretty good and well at the very least I'm able to say that rewatching Insidious: The Last Key for the first time in almost a decade uh made me realize two things. One, there's a pretty good reason why I didn't remember much about this movie and two, I somehow had what's probably the coolest demon in the entire Insidious franchise slip away from my mind along with the flowing tide of a fairly bland movie. Leigh Whannell returned to write the film once again, but did not return as director as was his role for Chapter 3. This time Adam Robitel, the writer and director of The Taking of Deborah Logan, was the one behind the camera. If you've seen The Taking of Deborah Logan, then it should be no shock to find that the demon in this movie has a crazy cool design.

[00:01:41]There's definitely some good stuff here and I'm excited to sink my teeth into it since it feels very fresh to me. So, let's talk about Insidious: The Last Key.

[00:01:51]>> [music] >> What we have on our hands here is yet another prequel to the Lambert haunting.

[00:02:10]With this essentially being a direct sequel to chapter 3 following Elise, Tucker, and Specs as they carry on with their work together. And Elise receives a call asking for help from someone who lives in the home where she grew up, causing a dark connection to something that still lingers there to resurface and forcing Elise to face something that she left behind a long time ago. One thing that's been the case for these movies up to this point is that as far as sequels and prequels go, they do a much better job than many at actually justifying themselves and feeling like they add weight to the first film.

[00:02:40]That's not something that you see often and it's really nice. With Insidious Chapter 2 doing some really cool stuff in terms of the supernatural experiences in the first movie by recontextualizing them and Chapter 3 developing Elise's character with a genuinely compelling arc that gave her a whole new dimension in the first film. The big question mark here is, at least to me, I felt like Chapter 3 did a perfectly good job of directly connecting Elise's storyline to the first film and expanding on it. There's nothing that I felt like was really missing or needed to be filled in. Here's the thing that I appreciate about what this chapter brings to the overall story. [music] Chapter 3's ending is kind of dumb. It feels really forced with the lipstick-face demon appearing behind Elise and didn't feel like a natural connection, but the one thing that I can appreciate about the direction that this film takes, particularly towards the end, is how it adds to the sense of Elise knowing that her death is approaching that was established in Chapter 3 by building up to the Lambert haunting and having it start to bleed into her world before she ever got the call from Elaine asking for help. There's a super cool moment towards the end of the film where they're in the further and behind one of the doors they see Dalton falling over in the attic of his house. They make eye contact but can't stay for long. That moment is already really cool as it shows the timeline starting to come together as Elise got a glimpse into the first moment of her last venture. And the final moment of the film also has her dreaming about Dalton in the further as she did for Quinn before going to help her.

[00:04:06]>> Tell Josh I'll be there in the morning.

[00:04:08]>> Plus we get, I guess, a better version of the lipstick face jump scare that was in Chapter 3. I still think it's a kind of goofy that like we just keep shoving those into the end, but this one's better than the one in the last movie, at least. Now, this is much more of how I would have liked to see Chapter 3 tie itself into the first movie. There's more narrative meat here. It's a lot more interesting and is quite foreboding as we can feel that final investigation closing in on Elise, further leaning into that feeling of her knowing that she was probably heading towards her death when she agreed to take this one on. I like that. It was very much appreciated after how flat the attempted connection was in the third film.

[00:04:42]But outside of that, my biggest problem with The Last Key is that it basically has no bearing on anything outside of its own contained narrative. Two and three added on to the first film, and while Chapter 4 is working to dive into Elise's backstory, and that could be a platform to add some more weight to her narrative, I don't think that what these additions bring really enhances anything that came before. And that's one of the big things that I love so much about the other sequels. To be clear, that's not to say that the backstory given for Elise has nothing interesting going on in it. I think there's actually some pretty cool stuff here, but it's all contained within this one film, and that makes The Last Key feel very disconnected from the others. There's been a satisfying through line that doesn't really feel present here despite the film diving into Elise's backstory because none of what we get into here really has any connection to anything else that's happened. In Chapter 3, getting into the story of her husband worked because of how it brought her to encountering the Bride in Black, who was probably pissed at her for taking Josh when he was a kid, and that made it feel imposing when she went to help the Lamberts because she knew that she may be facing the spirit who intended to kill her. The Last Key, well, it has a dope demon that I'll talk about towards the end of this video, it doesn't have any of that. This is a new demon, a new backstory, new characters, a new location. It's all fairly stand-alone.

[00:05:58]>> Stop it.

[00:05:59]You're making it up.

[00:06:01]>> That's not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as satisfying of a film as some of the others because of it. That being said, they did some cool things within what very easily could have been a super generic backstory for a character like Elise. One big problem, though, is that the last key is kind of just repeating what they literally just did in Chapter 3. There's a lot of stuff that feels like we're retreading ground here, but Elise's storyline is perhaps the most egregious one, as it takes what felt like a satisfying conclusion for her character going into the original film in Chapter 3, wipes it away, and kind of just goes, "Yeah, let's do that again." At the start of Chapter 3, Elise was unwilling to travel into the Further as she had been threatened by a demon on the other side who wanted to harm her, but she realized that this was all she had, and it was what she was meant to do. So, leaving that behind out of fear for death when everyone's going there anyway was not worth it. She regained her willingness to face the darkness, saved Quinn, found her people, and walked off into the sunset. In Chapter 4, Elise is unwilling to travel into the Further as she was being threatened by a demon on the other side who wanted to use her powers, but she realizes that she has to be willing to face the darkness or she'll be haunted by this forever. So, she faces it, saves her niece, and walks off into the sunset.

[00:07:11]It's kind of just a like straight wipe and repeat of the same structure that her arc had in the last movie.

[00:07:18]>> [music] >> Different details in some sense, but structurally, it's the same. And that not only makes the story feel repetitive, but it also harms the genuinely strong impact that her arc in Chapter 3 had, which is easily the best thing about that movie. Going from how Chapter 3 ended to, "Yeah, I don't want to travel into the Further again because of this entity that for whatever reason was never mentioned as a deterrent for me before," is such a huge bit of whiplash. It's really unfortunate and not the only example of it feeling like this franchise was kind of running out of things to do with this character. For the first hour, there is next to nothing interesting going on. It's after that 1-hour mark that we start to get some genuinely cool stuff, but that first bit can really drag and makes it feel like you're going in for the most bland, boring, and empty entry in the entire franchise. At least his backstory of having the abusive father hurting her because of his fear of the psychic things that she says manifesting his anger towards her is about as generic a backstory as you can get for a character like this. The haunting that Elise is investigating doesn't have any hooks up front, so then we have to try and rely on our enjoyment of the characters to get through. Look, Lin Shaye is amazing and I can never tire of her, but it feels like we're just going through the motions at this point. It's Shaye's charm that carries this entire thing. Tucker and Specs get their most screen time by far in this movie, but this too feels like something that's almost creatively bankrupt at this point.

[00:08:41]>> She's psychic.

[00:08:43]We're sidekick.

[00:08:44]>> I love these characters. I need to be as clear about that as I can be. Specs and Tucker are the loves of my life, but this movie runs into the problem of just repeating bits from the previous films and pushing them so far into cartoonish levels that it just doesn't work. I said that they get the most screen time here out of any of the movies and that's partially great because I really like them, but this level of cartoonish doesn't work if you're going to focus on them this heavily. I think back to Insidious Chapter 2 when they're in Elise's house for the first time after she died and there, well, they still have some goofy moments, they still feel like people and I don't get that feeling in this movie. They even had an opportunity to do something interesting with them as Specs crushes a dude's head in this movie to protect himself and the others, but all we get there is one short moment of him looking sad, Elise comforting him, and then it's never acknowledged again. I feel like that could have opened the story up to seeing another side of Specs and Tucker and brought more to their characters going into the first film like chapter 3 did for Elise, but that's not what happens.

[00:09:42]We're just repeating stuff we've seen in the other movies and introducing this bizarre romance angle for them with Elise's nieces Elise's niece Elise's nieces.

[00:09:52]Jesus, okay. And this is about as forced of a B plot as you can get. I just can't buy into the developing love interest here at all, man. None of it feels even remotely natural. Part of the problem once again here is that the new characters being introduced into the franchise are just not interesting. We have Ted Garza who's the man who now lives in Elise's childhood home and well, he's not particularly developed. I don't think it's a problem here. He serves his purpose in the story for setting up some revelations in Elise's backstory and getting the ball rolling, but where it really sticks out is with Elise's brother and his two daughters.

[00:10:24]We have that backstory of a pretty brutal upbringing being set up with their father not being a particularly good dude and that concludes with Elise running away and leaving her younger brother Christian with their father which caused a lifelong rift between the two of them and they don't speak to one another largely because Christian refuses to have a relationship with her after she left him alone with their father. That there that would have been a fantastic point of focus for this movie to zero in on, but Christian is only in the bare minimum number of scenes for them to have this plot be in the movie and it does not get a second more. There was way too much time spent on getting the story set up and it comes at the expense of the actual story itself playing out in a way that can often feel really rushed and unsatisfying. Elise says at the end of the movie that she's always thought she was afraid of dying but realizes that she was only afraid of dying before she had a family again. Having the story come to a head with this makes it seem like her regaining that connection with her family along with getting close [music] to Tucker and Specs, of course, would be a core idea that the movie would be exploring, but it really doesn't and that feels like a huge missed opportunity. It only does this in the most superficial way.

[00:11:28]Bruce Davison gives a really strong performance during his limited screen time as Christian and I wish the movie had incorporated him more into things and directly dealt with his relationship to Elise more than it did. As it stands, he tells her off when he sees her, then his daughter gets taken into the further, Elise saves her, and then they make up. That's essentially the extent of his involvement here. That feels like a huge wasted opportunity.

[00:11:49]>> Is this really your sister?

[00:11:50]>> No, it is. Come on.

[00:11:51]>> Yes, yes.

[00:11:52]>> The one sequence where I feel like they did do something genuinely interesting with him is when Elise mentions finding a whistle that he lost when he was a kid. Their mother gave it to him as something that he could have to call for help if he was afraid and needed her, but when they were confronted by a spirit when they were kids, it was lost.

[00:12:08]So, when she finds it again, he goes to the house and tries to find it for himself. I really like this because it's helping to illustrate that beneath the surface level of him pushing back against all of the supernatural things that Elise talks about, there is still that scared child inside of him that wants to call for his mother and is still being inclined to believe what his big sister said about the ghosts when they were kids. I just wanted more from him. His daughters, while not played by bad actors or anything, they do a good job, are damn near empty characters. One of them talks about also seeing things like Elise and then it's never mentioned again. Aside from that, they're just kind of here as a plot device to give Elise a way to reconnect with her brother and to include that super force thing between the sisters and Specs and Tucker. It's all just really thin and you'd think that at the very least having this backstory go on and expand on Elise's family would bring more to her character, but it really doesn't. It all just sort of exists in the world now without much weight. In regards to her father, there are a few things here that I thought were interesting with most of that coming after the point when some of the things from earlier on in the film are recontextualized. We learn two things. He did much worse than Elise ever thought as we see a flashback of him keeping a woman captive and straight up murdering her, but we also learn that people in this house are being influenced by a demon that Elise accidentally led into this world when she was a kid and her father is no exception to that. The stuff that he did to her was all him, but part of the more evil acts that he committed later on was just down to the influence from this demon, which winds up being the same thing that we see going on with Ted Garza when a young woman is found in his basement and the facade drops. It seems that he called them here to take the demon away because he was being forced to do things he didn't want to do. I will say though, some of this side of the movie is really [music] thin and you kind of just have to go with it. It's not clear why the demon has to lure Elise back to the house to do what it wants to do. Maybe the doors it's wanting to open are only found here, but we know that in the further space and time don't work the way that they do normally as we watch them teleport to the hospital from the house at the end of the movie. The motivations of these spirits, how it all operates, why people are being kept down there instead of killed off to be trapped in the further, none of it is clarified much, but that's not the end of the world. I don't need them to go much further than evil entities do evil but I feel like given the attempt at emotional weight here, a bit more would have gone a long way. Anyway, one of the cooler things that this movie does is flipping something that Elise saw when she was younger on its head, which comes as a part of that great shift around the hour mark of the film. She saw someone that she thought was a spirit, but it turns out that this was not the case. The woman who Elise saw was actually alive and was being kept as a victim of the demon manipulating Elise's father. And that twist is a genuinely cool moment.

[00:14:42]It brings up a lot of guilt for her realizing that she could have saved this woman and it's also an example of something that this movie does that's extremely annoying. On a number of occasions, something will happen or be revealed and then immediately after a character will just stand there and explain what we just watched or someone will clarify something that was very clear already like they thought we were not going to be able to follow along otherwise. After a lengthy flashback at the start of the movie, Elise then sits down and explains what we just watched to Specs and Tucker, so that's all cleared up. There's more here, but there's a lot that did not need to be included. When Christian can't find his whistle, they ADR'd in his character going, "Where's my whistle?" which doesn't feel natural at all. When Christian says to Elise that she scared the hell out of him when they were kids with stories about monsters and then left him to a real monster, he immediately goes, >> You abandoned me to a real monster, my father.

[00:15:33]>> Elise explains in detail a revelation that we watch play out literally a moment before, and upon finding evidence of other victims, she calls out and says, "You weren't the only one, Anna."

[00:15:42]as if the spirit lingering here would not be aware of this. There are so many examples of this happening, and it just makes it feel like they either weren't confident in their writing or weren't confident in the audience, and neither of those are good. There's a bit near the end where Elise finds the spirit of her father in the Further and Keyface hands her a weapon. And when her father goes up against the wall like she did when he used to hit her, she goes to town on him before being called away and realizes that the demon is using her anger to power itself up. This one really bothers me, largely because it completely goes against the kind of character that we know Elise to be.

[00:16:15]>> [music] >> Now, that kind of thing can be used in very emotionally potent ways, this is not an example of that. We watched something somewhat similar to this play out in the third film where she finds who she thinks is Jack in the Further, and when he hands her a blade and tells her to join him here so they can be together again, she sees right through that without missing a beat. She's not one to fall for the tricks of these demons [music] in the Further, and I think that especially because it's literally an undisguised Keyface handing her the weapon, the moment feels like an insane stretch. I think that it could have been interesting for the movie to go down this path of Elise being really emotionally overwhelmed by the situation because, well, some of that is here, it doesn't feel like it goes nearly far enough for this moment to feel believable. Oh, and right after this, we get a scene where a bunch of flashbacks quickly go by, and she explains that her father was a puppet of this entity as if anyone watching the movie hadn't already figured that one out. This is one of those reveals that when it happened, I was more surprised by the fact that the movie thought I didn't already know this. Also, while we're talking about a scene that takes place in the Further, the Further kind of sucks at this point.

[00:17:18]It's one of the big things that made the first movie so good, but over time it kind of just fell apart into being the most bland version possible. It used to feel like this dark maze littered with strange spirits, frozen vignettes stuck in time without clear intention, an atmosphere of something truly otherworldly.

[00:17:34]And now it's just blue rooms with fog.

[00:17:37]It feels especially bizarre in this movie because this house is literally right next to a prison where tons of people have died. And Elise talks about how many spirits there are here. And yet when we're in the Further, there's nothing. We only see entities that are directly relevant to the story at hand, which feels like a massively wasted opportunity. They could have done so much with that setup. The only notable moment there is when Elise talks to a younger version of herself. And I don't really know how this works. It could have been cool to have it be a time-bending thing where Elise remembered speaking to someone in the Further as a kid and getting advice from them, but there's no indication that that's the case. So, is this just like a weird manifestation of her younger self? Is it meant to be an alternate timeline? I mean, what purpose does it actually serve? It feels like a moment that should have had some weight to it, but it feels mostly just shoved in here because this is a movie exploring her childhood and it's something weird they can do with time in the Further for the final act of the film. Yeah, I mean, the narrative here is not great. It's definitely the weakest of the franchise up to this point and doesn't give us much of anything new or unique. And we've basically lost any and all of the tone of Insidious at this point. So, it just feels like a sidebar. That bit where they see Dalton is cool, and I think that the final shot of the movie being Elise sitting up in bed after calling Elaine to say that she's coming to help Dalton is genuinely one of the best moments out of any of these movies. She sits up in the night alone in the silence staring off into her quiet room as it dawns on her that the case she just agreed to may well be her final outing, and the film fades to black, [music] directly connecting into where the first movie picks up with her. That is a genuinely heavy moment that I just wish was found in a movie that didn't otherwise feel so narratively empty.

[00:19:18]But, is the movie scary?

[00:19:22]No, it's not. But, that's not to say that there aren't some cool spooks to have fun with here. Honestly, most of the scares here are completely forgettable, and I don't know if this is just because I watched too many horror movies, but the scene of the vent where she's searching through these suitcases and glancing behind them between each one to see if there's a spirit coming [music] is yelling from a mile away that it's trying to misdirect you and that the jump scare is actually going to come from the suitcase.

[00:19:45]I think if they had done this like once or twice, it would have been fine, but it goes on for long enough that by the time the scare actually comes, I'm fully expecting it to come from the suitcase, which it does. If you make your misdirection too obvious, it's not misdirection anymore. It's just direction. The one thing I can say about The Last Key is that it has what's potentially the coolest demon of the entire franchise with KeyFace. Javier Botet, once again, ladies and gentlemen, we just talked about this dude in the wreck video, and I'm so glad to be doing it again. He's awesome. The visual design of the demon is cool at a glance, but what really makes this one so great is Botet's physical performance and the overall movement of this thing, which is so unsettling and strange. Probably the most effective shot of the movie is when one of Christian's daughters is being attacked, [music] and we see KeyFace in the other room coming towards her.

[00:20:33]Genuinely great stuff here. I love how this thing is like always shaking when its keys touch metal. It's like sending electrical shocks through them. There's There's such a cool feel to this guy.

[00:20:42]The keys on the fingers are awesome, and it's got such a unique MO with the different keys on its fingers being a part of how it possesses people. One to silence them, and then the other to lock them away in its domain. That is super cool. I want to know what the other ones do. I think that KeyFace is underutilized and is very thin in the story, but its presence [music] and some of the things that are done with it make that kind of easy to accept cuz when we do get it, it's so cool.

[00:21:05]Insidious: The Last Key is definitely what I would consider to be the most forgettable of all of these movies. And in many ways, it's just bland. Even knowing the cool that comes after the 1-hour mark, that first chunk is so dull that it completely deters me from wanting to sit down and watch the thing again. It makes sense why the franchise was put to bed for a while after this one and why they've gone in a different direction since because, well, Elise is a beloved character, focusing on her like this had definitely run its course at this point.

[00:21:33]It's not terrible, it's got some cool stuff going on, but it mostly just feels hollow and tired to me. I know that there are people who actually love this movie and I think that's great. There are bits where I can absolutely understand why that is, but to me it doesn't feel like Insidious is retreading things that have been done much better in previous entries and overall doesn't feel like it added much to the story, [music] which is something that the previous films had been doing a very good job of. It's kind of standing on its own island and I just didn't feel like it infused itself into the overarching Insidious narrative very well, which is a shame. Thanks for watching through to the end. I hope you enjoyed the video enough that you want to see more and if that's the case, consider subscribing and hitting the notification bell because YouTube can sometimes suck at recommending channels.

[00:22:15]A huge thank you to my wonderful Patreon supporters and YouTube channel members who are a massive help in allowing me to continue committing as much time as I can to making these videos. If you want to gain access to things like behind-the-scenes material or gain early access to my videos, consider supporting me on either platform. As always, thank you for stopping by Rockland Graves.

[00:22:35]I hope you've enjoyed your stay.