Director Report Card: Leigh Whannell (2015)

Turns out it's been two years since I actually finished a Director's Report Card, which doesn't make me feel great. In hopes of getting myself back in the groove of things, I decided to throw out a short one. Me deciding to do a Leigh Whannell retrospective, you can probably guess, was originally meant to be part of a longer project also covering James Wan's career... And that is coming soon. The two have been writing partners for years, their paths intertwined. However, with the new “Wolf Man” having just come out, I bumped this one up the schedule. Whannell has carved out a niche for himself free of his buddy, after all. 

1. Insidious: Chapter 3

"Insidious: Chapter 2" would be the last time James Wan had a direct hand in the second popular horror franchise he created. While he seemingly brought the story of the Lambert family to a satisfying close, he knew enough about the business to leave the door – the red one, I suppose – open for a third entry. Rather than abandon the ghostly series to the Darren Lynn Bousmans of the world, Wan would hand his baby off to the series' co-creator and his closest collaborator. Leigh Whannall would make the jump from screenwriter to director with the third installment of the franchise. 

This was a smart move all around. One suspects Whannall was eager to break into directing. The third entry in an already popular series he was already writing seemed like the natural place to test out his abilities behind the camera. If Whannall decided directing wasn't for him, there would be little stopping him from going right back to writing only, right? If it did work out, this would be a relatively low risk place, as far as film sets go, to prove his talents. Blumhouse's standard model of keeping production budgets low and spending more on advertisement, insuring the film makes back its whole budget on opening weekend, is a good way for new directors to test out their ability. This worked out exactly as planned. The studio got another hit and Leigh Whannall successfully launched a directorial career. 

Instead of picking up the sequel hook from the end of "Chapter 2," this "Insidious" is set several years before the events of the original. Teenager Quinn Brenner reaches out to medium Elise Rainier in hopes of contacting her recently deceased mother. Elise, reeling from the suicide of her husband, says she's retired. Shortly afterwards, Quinn is struck by a car and flat lines for several seconds. Afterwards, the girl – stuck in bed with a broken leg – begins to experience strange phenomena in her apartment building. She is seemingly being pursued by a wheezing spirit. The haunting gets bad enough that Quinn's skeptical dad calls in ghost hunters, Specs and Tucker. When Quinn is dragged into the Further, Elise appears to confront the evil spirits after the girl. 

It's become an unavoidable cliché in recent years that no theme has been more explored by the horror genre than grief and trauma. However, considering "Insidious" has always been concerned with spirits from the afterlife, it's a natural theme for this prequel to explore. The central idea here is one of overcoming grief and moving on. Quinn feels stunted by the death of her mother, which her blue collar father seemingly can't confront at all. Elise, meanwhile, has sheltered herself from the world after her husband's suicide. These two are trapped in a cycle of being unable to accept the passing of their loved ones and continue on. Of course, through their traumatic experience, they will both learn that life is still worth living, that our loved ones would want us to keep going. Simple stuff but it's a sturdy thematic foundation to build your spook show upon.

"Insidious: Chapter 3" makes another logical choice for the series. Lin Shaye was certainly a stand-out in the first two installments, the genre veteran bringing a likable presence with her. Elise had shuffled off the mortal coil by the time the second film started but, no matter, simply go a little further back in time. Building the series around a spiritual investigator, who clearly had many other cases before the Lamberts, was obviously the easiest way to keep the "Insidious" train rolling. And if it meant we got more of Lin Shaye's comfy, grandmotherly persona, who could complain? Elise had the standard "coming out of retirement for one last gig" arc, which gives Shaye some decent emotional text to bite into. 

Calling "Insidious: Chapter 3" a "Lin Shaye vehicle" is slightly misleading. She is not truly the star of the film. That would fall to a photogenic young actress, Stefanie Scott. While you never quite know what you'll get from the leads in horror films, Scott is good. Quinn isn't merely defined by her trauma, also having a dream of performing on-stage as an actress. She also has good chemistry with Dermont Mulroney as her dad, a working man who clearly isn't the best at processing emotions. In fact, the cast is surprisingly likeable overall. Tate Berney is amusing as Quinn's hyperactive little brother and I like the amount of attention paid to her friends and crushes. Quinn is more fleshed out than your standard slasher movie final girl. We get a sense of what her life is like, outside these events. 

Which is not to say that "Chapter 3" isn't a standard jump scares delivery machine, that formula which Blumhouse has turned into such a profitable model. The third installment absolutely continues the tradition of hammering the audience with as many loud shrieks as possible. Every ghostly encounter brings with it a sudden noise or a grisly face being thrusted towards the heroine. It's all thoroughly predictable, the audience knowing that a big shock is about the come the minute everything starts to get quiet. The most ridiculous one is saved for the prequel's final moments, in which the franchise's silliest but most famous ghost puts in a cameo. The way the ghosts slide in and out of frame can't help but bring fun house attractions to mind, showing the mechanical devotion the "Insidious" series has to making people squeal. 

However, it must be said, I think Leigh Whannall is actually a little better at delivering this kind of tired old scare than his old buddy, James Wan, is. Part three does not lean on Joseph Bishara's cacophonous score as much as the previous two entries did. Whannall seems to understand that jump scares are a little less obnoxious when not always accompanied by thundering strings on the soundtrack. A sequence involving the central ghoul – played, by the way, by the same guy who was the Mummy in "The Monster Squad" – being tossed out a window, only for our heroine to foolishly look back out, is quite well executed. I would argue that "Chapter 3" utilizes a bit more subtly than is demanded of this type of boo-show. Setting the story almost entirely within a rickety, dilapidated old apartment building is a sensible updating of the gothic cliché of the dust caked Victorian mansion. Most of us probably have much more familiarity with the former than the latter, making this a reasonably modern upgrade to the haunted house premise. 

While hopelessly retrained within the PG-13 limits of this series, Whannell does make an effort to add more variety to the types of scares delivered here. That Quinn spends nearly the entire film with her leg in a heavy cast makes her especially vulnerable. It also draws attention to bodily deformation and pain. This is extended by the villain, an emaciated spectre who is always struggling to breath and garbed in a stained, tattered hospital gown. This reinforces the idea of a dead spirit, desperate to cling to life. This builds towards some decent body horror in the second act. The image of an eye appearing in Quinn's throat – possibly pilfered from "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2" – was bold enough to make one of the posters. Another gag, truly utilizing that leg cast for some good old fashion cringes, is probably the cleverest scare in the movie. Quinn losing her identity is nicely visualized by her eyes disappearing from her face, a gnarly little bit of make-up.

By leaving James Wan – save a cameo as a casting director – the "Insidious" series can also move beyond the traditional visual look he brings with him. Stepping into the role of cinematographer is Brian Pearson, who has previously mostly worked in the realm of television and low budget horror flicks. Pearson, however, does decent work. “Chapter 3” discards the overwhelming greenish grey look of the first two and introduces a little more color into things. Some rich reds suggests a hellish atmosphere, while blues and blacks bringing some classical, spooky Halloween vibes. Overall, Whannell and his team makes good use of lighting and shadows throughout, with stray rays often breaking through into rooms or barely seen beasties lurking in the dark.

As much as “Chapter 3” does its own thing, apart from the first two installments, this is still an “Insidious” movie. By which I mean, it's going to get really stupid before the end. Once we enter the Further in the last act, the expected funhouse atmosphere takes hold. There's a fine layer of mist on the floor. Elise is presented with different creaking spirits, each one like a set piece in a haunt. The previous installment overcame the inherent goofiness of its “pasty faced ghouls leaping out of the dark” set-up by moving more towards intentional camp. “Chapter 3” does this too, when little ol' Lin Shaye cusses out a familiar spirit and punches them out a window. It's hard to deny that the filmmakers know the material is getting silly when they include a comical moment like that.

“Insidious: Chapter 3” could almost be watched apart from the first two entries, taking place before either happen. This represents an origin stories of sorts for Specs and Tucker, explaining how high-tech hucksters like this became associated with a classical medium. Steve Coulter stops by as Carl, Elise's buddy from “Chapter 2,” for one whole scene. There are tedious acknowledgements of the first two films' trademark ghosts, the Bride in Black showing up for a quick scene. None of this stuff adds much to the narrative and is easy to ignore, if slightly puzzling, if somewhere to want to leap right into this one for whatever reason. 

Ultimately, “Insidious: Chapter 3” does not overcome its status as a disposable piece of entertainment, another Blumhouse product they can mark in their yearly earnings' calendar. This film delivers the expected amount of loud scares and creepy apparitions, scientifically designed to make back nearly its entire production budget during opening weekend. (That's exactly what happened too, “Chapter 3” opening with 10 million against a budget of 11 million.) Within this modest framework, however, I do think “Insidious: Chapter 3” manages to be a little better than the films that came before. It's a tiny bit better done in terms of frights and puts a little more work into its characters. Destined to slip away quickly from the memory but amusing enough while you're watching it. Good job, Leigh. [Grade: B-]