Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
Having not seen the first two, I saw this movie as the first in a series instead of a prequel. A young high school girl named Quinn (Stefanie Scott) goes to see a psychic, Elise Rainier (the great Lin Shaye), who has been recommended to her by friends. Quinn wants to talk to her deceased mother. Elise finds out that Quinn has tried to contact her on her own and she warns her against this, saying that "when you call upon a dead person, they
all hear!" And Elise is haunted by a spirit that has attached herself to her when she tried to contact her own dead husband. So she's not very willing to "visit the other side," being afraid that the evil spirit awaits to kill her. Meanwhile, Quinn is being haunted by an entity in her own apartment who is most definitely not her mother. All sorts of spooky things follow. Her father (Dermot Mulroney) believes his daughter is under attack and tries to get Elise to help. Meanwhile, an internet duo who "hunt ghosts" come to help, but are not very good. It's up to Elise to help but she has to face her fears. In the meantime Quinn is slowly being possessed by this evil spirit.
Very good scare-fest, with all the players doing a great job, especially the always good Shaye and the young Scott. I know about certain things in the first two movies, especially a certain Darth Maul-looking sucker who comes around, and the fact that Shaye and the two internet guys are in the first two movies, the latter something I found out just by checking out the IMDB cast list. I really want to see these first two due to this one being an enjoyable time.
Empire of the Ants (1977)
Hokey, fun time-waster, with a boat full of people going with realtor Joan Collins to a somewhat remote island to try to interest potential clients into buying property. Collins plays her usual late-career bitchy self, Robert Lansing is the boat captain, John David Carson is a somewhat cynical young man, with other familiar faces rounding out the potential investors/victims. Victims of giant ants, that is. I knew this wasn't going to be an award-winner but wow, the cheesy effect of having giant ants just being obviously superimposed ants in a terrarium is hurtful. You can see them ostensibly clustered against trees in the forest, then many of them start flailing their legs against the invisible glass and you have an affect that just turns out funny. Plus, they have a sound affect attached to them that sounds like a woman screaming soprano. Then, for the close-ups, there are giant rubber ant suits that the stars have to wrestle through. With these type of movies, I try to pick who's going to die and who's going to live, and I was spot-on this time, right down to the characters and their number. It's pretty bad, so don't feel bad if you miss it, but if you're into crappy, laughable monster flicks like I am, you'll be in hog heaven.
For the cheesy movie fanatic:
For just a straight-up movie fan:
Reply to Topic
