For those still keeping track, this fourth Insidious movie is a sequel to the last Insidious movie, which was itself a prequel to the first Insidious movie, which was followed by its own sequel and then the aforementioned prequel and…so on. Horror-wise, not a lot has changed in this world over the past seven years. These are haunted-house movies with no hesitation about deploying the most timeworn components of genre spookery (door-creak! demon!), and there’s an almost snuggly comfort in seeing them trotted out once again.
The movie’s most interesting element is its star, 74-year-old Lin Shaye, a horror veteran whose credits stretch all the way back to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Shaye has an old pro’s skill for creating emotional dimension, and it adds gratifying depth to her character, the sweet-old-lady demonologist Elise Rainier. Elise has been a part of the Insidious narrative from the beginning, but now she takes center stage. In a long introductory segment set in New Mexico in 1953, we pay a visit to her childhood home, which is situated next door to a grim penitentiary where her father (Josh Stewart) is employed. He is a sour, abusive man, and his wife (Tessa Ferrer) does her best to shield their kids, little Elise (Ava Kolker) and her brother Christian (Pierce Pope), from her husband’s rages. He’s especially infuriated by the connection Elise insists that she has with a purgatorial spirit world called The Further – a psychic link she’s inherited from her mother, writes Kurt Loder in his latest review for Reason.
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