Insidious: Chapter Three

I TiVoed this in the expectation that it would be a gore-fest of the kind that bore me silly. I figured twenty minutes, tops, before I hit the erase button. But at thirty minutes I was still watching. This movie is actually a lot better than any movie with a three after the title has any right to be. The team of James Wan and Leigh Whannell created the mega-ugly but mega-profitable Saw franchise as well is this one, due for a fourth installment in 2017, so I assume they must have gotten very, very rich off them. The story is actually pretty good, as is the acting and the design of the whole thing. Admitting, of course, that the whole business of supernatural beings, psychics, and demon possession is a lot of bushwah. But you can say the same of The Exorcist, and I thought that was a pretty swell scary movie. This one doesn’t rely on cheap scares and explosions of blood and vomit to shock you, but builds its suspense gradually and honestly … until the last five seconds or so, when they couldn’t resist throwing in an unworthy final boo! that was totally unnecessary and stupid. My advice: Turn it off when the dog begins to bark.