You Look Familiar...

Please tell me these kinds of things happen to others:

I've spent the last 23 years of my life assuming I'd seen 1995's Copycat, though in fairness, I also spent a lot of those years saying "I can never remember the difference between Copycat and In Dreams." Both were post-Silence of the Lambs mid-budget studio releases about serial killers and their relationships with Oscar-nominated actresses. Both were...well, that might be where the similarities end. Turns out, I'd never seen Copycat! And also, as I discovered today, all I remember of In Dreams (aside from APPLES) is that I always confused it with Copycat.

Who knew my brain had created a Highlander-esque situation for '90s serial killer thrillers?

Quick Plot: Dr. Helen Hudson (the always perfect Sigourney Weaver) is a well-known criminal psychologist with a lucrative writing and speaking career that focuses on her insights into murderers, including the recently escaped convicted monster Daryll Lee Cullum, played by Harry Connick Jr. in a way that makes you wonder how the same charm can make Christmas carols sound like butter.

Cullum tracks Helen down on a college campus lecture, cornering her in the ladies room after brutally killing her security guard. He comes a few breaths away from hanging Helen to death before being caught, leaving our heroine with a severe, understandable case of PTSD.

13 months later, Helen has rebuilt her life, The Net-style. She connects with fellow trauma victims over dial-up internet and gets her deliveries via a good pal clearly marked for death, especially when a new intrepid serial killer begins a tour in Helen's local San Francisco neighborhood. The investigating detectives (the delightfully capable Holly Hunter as MJ and "I always confuse him for Harry Connick Jr." Dermont Mulroney as Rueben) enlist her expertise and by golly, we've got ourselves a mystery.

Written by Ann Biderman and David Madsen and directed by Jon Amiel, Copycat is the kind of grown-up thriller that flourished in the early '90s and for whatever reason, seemed to have gone extinct. Maybe it was the influence of David Fincher's Se7en, which came out to shocked theatergoers just a few weeks earlier in the fall of 1995. The films share a subgenre and valid R-rating, yet they feel like such polar opposites in terms of their filmmaking: gritty and cruel in one, crisp and plucky in the other.

This isn't to imply that Copycat is light-hearted romp. While the post-Halloween 2018 years have made many of us wince when we hear the word "trauma", Copycat addresses the challenges of surviving a horrific experience with intelligence. The very casting of Sigourney Weaver, a bonafide action star who immediately suggests competent, intelligent strength, makes Helen's position that much more interesting. Here's an actress we associate with power put in the vulnerable, human position of processing something that has nearly destroyed her. The journey is fascinating. 

Add to that the absolute perfection that is Holly Hunter's MJ and some ahead-of-its-time understanding of male rage and. Hunter is always a fun performer to watch, especially when she gets to dig into the grit of a character. The plucky female copy would go on to be something of a standard in procedural stories, but her MJ is fresh, complicated, and fantastic. 

It's all the more interesting because our villain...is not. And that's a good thing! I won't go too deep into the details (how dare I spoil a movie old enough to now attend its own 10-year high school reunion) but the actual identity of our copycat killer is brilliant in its blandness. As Helen tells us in her opening lecture, these are men who are "quiet, unassuming, nice." Later, Helen finds better adjectives: sad, second rate, boring, and impotent. No one leaves Copycat remembering the killer: it's the women who hunt him worth watching. 

High Points

By golly, is there anything more satisfying than watching two great actresses interact with each other when playing rich, fully developed characters?

Low Points

This is no real fault of Copycat, but watching Holly Hunter down cheeseburgers made me wonder if this is the origin of the now-trite "hot working woman in a man's world who eats junk food" trope

Lessons Learned

A vibrator is a tool of survival

The upside of having a nervous breakdown is not giving a f$ck

Bullet-proof vests don't fit well under Miracle Bras

Rent/Bury/Buy

Time has been extremely kind to Copycat. I found this to be an incredibly enjoyable ride, and not just for its early Photoshop '90s nostalgia. Give it a go via Hulu. 

The Insidiousest

The general consensus at the announcement of 2015’s Insidious: Chapter 3 was an apathetic “oh, they made another Insidious movie.” As we’ve learned from American politics, much of humanity is horrible and awful and is often completely wrong.

Quick Plot: A few years before the actions of the first Insidious, other ghostly happenings occur. Quinn Brenner is a nice young high school senior hoping to make it into college on an acting scholarship. This will take her far away from her well-meaning but typically overbearing dad (Dermot Mulroney) who has put her in charge of the home and her younger brother following the death of his wife.

The only thing Quinn wants more than a killer monologue is to reconnect with her mother, who she believes to be present in her life in ghost form. Quinn reaches out to familiar face Elise Rainier (the one and only Lin Shaye), but the Insidious veteran has been having some problems of her own when it comes to entering The Further.

Elise, you see, recently lost her beloved husband. In trying to reach him, she has instead bumped into that familiar black-veiled senior citizen that once (and in the future) tortured two generations of the Lambert boys. As a result, Elise is a tad gun-shy when it comes to connecting with that other plain of existence.

Quinn, however, doesn’t really have a choice, as she’s somehow awakened an angry, homicidal spirit who’s trying to take her down into his hellish version of limbo. 

Insidious: Chapter 3 is written and directed by new wave horror veteran Leigh Whannell, who’s served as a screenwriter for most of James Wan’s projects. Whannell (who also shows up onscreen as the divisive pre-tie wearing ghostbuster Specs) clearly learned a whole lot from shadowing Wan over the last few years. Chapter 3 fits right into the series, and even offers some improvements.

While I enjoyed Insidious, the first sequel left me fairly disappointed, with the convoluted story getting in the way of the actual horror. Chapter 3 wisely simplifies things. Quinn’s haunting is straightforward and as a result, the film’s jump scares and visual chills hit quite well. We don’t have to know every detail about Quinn’s stalker. He’s just creepy.

The key ingredient in making this film work, however, is something far more special. Lin Shaye is the definition of a veteran character actor. She’s been in the business for decades but rarely seemed to get the spotlight. How nice is it that Leigh Whannell seemed to decide her time had finally come?

Shaye is wonderful in Insidious: Chapter 3, and more importantly, the movie pops because it has her at its center. Quinn’s story is fine on its own and young actress Stefanie Scott connects well, but around the halfway mark, Elise gets to take over and kick ass. It helps that the film develops her story, introducing the tragedy of her husband’s suicide (plus an adorably loyal golden retriever sidekick) to add weight to her psychic visits to The Further. 

This isn’t a game changer for horror, but it’s a solid, enjoyable, and whaddya know, actually scary entry into a successful franchise. This makes me eager to see more Whannell behind the camera, and equally eager to see the upcoming fourth film directed by The Taking of Deborah Logan’s Adam Robitel. 

High Points

34 years of watching horror movies has made me fairly immune to typical jump scares, but dangit, I gasped at least twice at simple scares that just worked exactly as they were designed to. Well done Mr. Whannell

As I said about the first Insidious’s devotion to having its characters NOT make the token cliched mistakes found in every haunted house flick of years past (not moving, not turning on the lights) it’s also refreshing to see Chapter 3 make a clear point of NOT having Quinn’s dad waste screentime doubting his daughter’s hauntings. 

Low Points

Much in the way the first Insidious included a baby sibling purely for the convenience of using a creepy baby monitor, this one seems to include a younger brother just for, well, help with the internet?

Lessons Learned

If you’re food shopping for a teenage girl in any movie made after 1995, always assume she’s a vegetarian to avoid the well-meaning offering of jerky only to have her tell you what I just did

Save the word "literally" for when you're literally being literal (thanks, millennial best friend character who cements her status as the secret mini-MVP of this movie)

You might think you’re tough, but trust me: you’re not as tough as Lin Shaye

Look! It’s--

James Wan cameoing as the director overseeing Quinn’s audition. That’s cute.

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m genuinely shocked by how much I enjoyed Insidious: Chapter 3. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s familiar in some ways and incredibly fresh in others. I found the film via HBO Go, but if it turns up near you, give it a go. You don’t necessarily have to watch the first two (and certainly not the second) to enjoy this one. Just enjoy it as a strong little ghost story. I think you’ll be pleased.