Insidious is quickly becoming one of the most successful horror franchise out there, and we now have a much better idea of what to expect from the latest installment.
The full length trailer for the upcoming sequel was released via Focus Features' YouTube account.
Insidious Chapter 3 will be a prequel, taking us back long before the events of the first movie and showing us how Elise (Lin Shaye) first got involved in exploring The Further. We can see that she takes on the case of a young girl, Quinn (Stefanie Scott), who is being tormented by creatures from this other realm.
In terms of plot, the movie doesn't seem like it's going to be anything revolutionary. After the second movie was actually pretty interesting, messing around with the timeline of the franchise, this one seems to be a pretty basic sort of "person lost to this alternate realm" type story. This time though the movie seems to be taking more of a possession route, and we see a version of Quinn seemingly taken over by the spirits, whereas in the first movie Dalton was basically just taken into the Further Poltergeist style.
The movie seems to be putting more focus on scares this time, whereas the last movie was pretty plot oriented, but that's totally fine given how great some of the scares in this trailer are. I particularly love the moment at the window, and all the imagery of the Further is still super creepy and unique. This is still one of the most interesting creations of this generation of horror, and it should be great to see it explored again.
What's also great is that Insidious Chapter 3 moves us away from the Lambert family. Their story made up the first two movies but was completely resolved in Chapter 2, and normally financing a sequel would mean having to find some contrived way to get them in danger again. But Chapter 3 is giving us a new set of characters, not dragging out the same storyline until it gets stupid like the Paranormal Activity franchise has arguably done with Katie's saga. Now the Insidious franchise can just explore a different family and a different threat each movie, all based around the further, which would allow this franchise to sustain itself for many more sequels without the need for an overly complicated mythology and contrived plot twists to keep things going (again, looking at you Paranormal Activity).
Insidious Chapter 3 will be directed by Leigh Whannell, as we previously reported. Horror fans might recognize him as writer of the first three Saw films, and he also stars in the Insidious films as Specs, one of the two comic relief ghost hunter characters. This will be his directorial debut, so hopefully he'll be able to transition well from writing to directing.
The movie will star newcomers to the franchise Dermot Mulroney and Stefanie Scott, as well as returning cast members Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson and Leigh Whannell, the team who we saw in the first two Insidious movies. Going forward it appears that these three characters are going to be what ties these movies together, and I'd be totally fine with seeing many more movies of their adventures together.
The first two Insidious movies were pretty massively successful. The original movie grossed $97 million worldwide on a $1.5 million budget, and the sequel took in $161 million with a $5 million budget. It's partly because of movies like this that horror budgets have increasingly been getting smaller as of late, with studios seeing that they can make so much money even if these movies costs extremely little. And if Chapter 3 is able to do remotely as well while costing almost nothing, it's likely we'll see many more Insidious movies for years to come.
Insidious Chapter 3 will open in theaters on June 5.
image courtesy of Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com