Rated PG-13, 97 minutesShaye charms, but otherwise the silly "Insidious: Chapter 3" lacks any real scares
The titular song in the movie "Ghostbusters" had the line, "I ain't afraid of no ghost." Neither will you even if you happen to see the silly, painfully slow horror movie "Insidious: Chapter 3," the latest installment in the "Insidious" film series and by far the weakest and least scary in that series yet. This chilling prequel, set before the haunting of the Lambert family, reveals how gifted psychic Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) reluctantly agrees to use her ability to contact the dead in order to help a father (Dermot Mulroney) and his teenage girl (Stefanie Scott), who has been targeted by a dangerous supernatural entity. Directed and written by "Saw" creator and actor Leigh Whannell, who also reprises a small role here he had from the other "Insidious" films, "Insidious: Chapter 3" is a sloppy, dumb movie that lacks the chills of the other "Insidious" films, which weren't great but had enough fun thrills to keep it at least mildly entertaining. Whannell, who created and produced the "Saw" series with his friend James Wan (who directed the first two in this series), makes his feature film debut here, and it's largely an inauspicious one because there's little place for the movie to go. It has a handful of serviceable jumps along with an evil ghost with exceedingly dirty feet, but a terribly slow first half with some woefully thin storytelling may quickly lose some and it doesn't find any sure footing until the final twenty minutes of the movie. "Insidious: Chapter 3" isn't a total waste, though, and it's helped by charming character actress Lin Shaye, who also made the first two "Insidious" movies memorable, as no-nonsense psychic Elise, who knows her way around the dark side and isn't afraid to push back when the ghosts start pushing her around. Whannell clearly wants her to be this film series' John Kramer or Freddy Krueger, building stories around a never-ending/nine-lives character, and while Shaye is certainly appealing enough to sustain another "Insidious" movie or two, the stories and the thrills must get better and more plentiful. This may draw in horror film fans or those who enjoyed the other "Insidious" movies, but "Insidious: Chapter 3," in spite of Shaye (who has the movie's best line, in the final few minutes of the movie), is a non-scary, silly waste of time.
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