A cheap ending to a franchise I love.
Terrible story, they erase the character's memories in the very first scene (just like where the end of Chapter 2 left off) and then we spend most of the movie trying to get those memories back. It's frustrating, annoying and the characters are made dumb because of it. Basically, it took way too long to get back to where we were at the start. Eliminate that unnecessary plot and you don't have much left. Which is why it feels like nothing happened. It takes so long to get started too, a solid 40 minutes with no scares. On top of that they didn't even bother giving the entity a backstory. Every Insidious movie gives a story to their villain, however small it may be. Absolutely nothing here. Elise's story looked promising at the end of Chapter 2, well it's as if they said "never mind that" because she only gets two scenes and they're completely unrelated to how things end for her in Chapter 2.
What worked well is Dalton (Ty Simpkins) he shows that he's capable of carrying the movie on his own and I like what personnality they gave him. Some of the father son dynamics were fairly interesting but that aside, Josh (Patrick Wilson)'s story felt pushed and what's with his father scaring the shit out of him by running through a window only to later appear as an angel. What happened between those two scenes to get to that? Chris (Sinclair Daniel) was by far my favorite, her comedic relief was welcome. I believe she takes on the role of Specs and Tucker here. The one scene they had was awesome, I hope they get a spin-off.
The paintings: those were fabulous, creepy and I only wanted more of them and that weird teacher which the movie completely forgets in the second half. I won't complain about the jumpscares sinse they've been part of this franchise for a while but some of them were incredibly cheap and predictable. Every scene with Darth Maul was genuinely scary though and i'm not sure if him being scary is just PTSD from watching the first. Too bad he was barely in the movie. The possession scenes are the most memorable and I like how they beat the entity. It just feels like it happened too fast (like how did they get the idea to beat the entity that way?) and I couldn't believe the movie ended when it ended.
