Insidious Chapter Three review: the balding ghost is back in the ventilation duct

James Wan and Leigh Whannell have done well out of the twin cottage industries that are the Saw and Insidious franchises. Have they heck. As I write, Wan's Fast and Furious 7 is on the point of becoming the third most successful movie of all time.

While James was automotively engaged, Whannell – until now writer and producer – steps behind the viewfinder for the first time. We are happy to relate that the team hasn’t lost touch with its roots. This prequel to a tolerable possession shocker from 2010 confirms that the reasonably priced machine is still ticking along with deadening efficiency.

There is not a touch of original character to the new picture. Set in a puzzling American Nowhere – it could be coastal; it could be flyover; it could be suburbia – Insidious Chapter Three details yet another banal possession by yet another off-the-peg spirit. This time, a teenage girl (Stefanie Scott), currently mourning her mother, falls foul of an underfed, balding ghoul who, breathing mask constantly slapped over toothless mouth, makes disturbing visits from the ventilation ducts.

The perennially game Lyn Shaye is back as medium who, unlike ludicrous paranormal investigators Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), quickly grasps grim truths behind the possession. Other mysteries solved in the course of Insidious Chapter Three include that surrounding the current location of Dermot Mulroney. Apparently, this is what he does now.

To a greater extent than the previous two movies, this "episode" is little more than a delivery system for the least subtle class of jump scare. You know what we mean. Just when you most expect it, something lunges at the camera while shrieking chords revisit the creakiest of aural clichés. You may as well pay somebody to slap you in the face with a damp rag once every five minutes. Wouldn't that become boring? You haven't seen Insidious Chapter Three yet.

What is most frustrating about this franchise is that the films are just competent enough to escape the fun-filled glades of Schlock Valley. Once the wet slaps and the shrill strings cease to work their unsettling magic, the viewer is left with no consoling camp or amusingly inappropriate gore. It’s just a big grey mass of adequacy.

At least Saw was properly disgusting. A mere 15A cert? What good is that to me?