Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth chapter in the series, is more retrospective, but still an intriguing addition because the focus this time is on Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) herself.

It starts with a flashback to 1953 when Elise was a little kid. This is when she was discovering that she was psychic and was able to see ghosts. The mother (Tessa Ferrer) was supportive of this, the brother (Bruce Davison) feared her ability, and the dad (Josh Stewart) did not like it one bit – he was very abusive towards her when she would use her powers.

I had thought the scenes with Elise’s flashbacks with her dad were very upsetting because she could not control what her mind was thinking and what her eyes were seeing.

One night, her dad locked her in the basement because she was talking to a ghost, which scared her brother. As she was downstairs, the ghost led her to a door telling her to open it with the key that was next to her. Hence the title: The Last Key. When Elise opens the door, a hand with keys as nails comes crawling out, and all the demons are released. Elise wakes up, and it turns out the flashback was really her nightmare.

This beginning scene plays a major part of the storyline because in the next scene, Elise gets a phone call with a man’s voice (Kirk Acevedo) asking if she can help him because of the paranormal activity that’s been going on in his house, which turns out to be Elise’s house when she was a kid. This shocks Elise and the audience. Elise doesn’t want to face her fear of going back to her old household; but she feels bad because she puts the blame on herself for opening the door to the demons.

Elise’s acting during this scene is very poweful because there is true emotion of fright at the thought of going back.

Throughout the movie there are few jump scares, but not too scary. A huge plot twist in the middle is actually very surprising. However, it all made sense to Elise because she realizes that the situation has been going on ever since she saw the ghost when she was little.

The ending was thrilling and exciting and opened the door to continue the series. This movie was not super scary because it had more of an involved plot rather than the action and fright of a basic horror movie, but I would give this movie a solid four stars.