Director: Patrick Wilson
Stars: Ty Simpkins, Sinclair Daniel, Patrick Wilson
When it came to extending the life of the Insidious franchise after putting the Lamberts through hell (twice), creators/producers James Wan & Leigh Whannell decided to give the series’ preeminent family a break for the 3rd and 4th films; prequels of exceedingly varying quality. Now though, for the belated 5th installment, enough time has evidently passed to justify bringing the Lamberts back for another turn in the barrel. But perhaps Insidious itself has outlasted its usefulness on the modern pop horror stage.
Appearing somewhat askew from horror trends circa 2023, this late entry piques interest as Patrick Wilson – patriarch Josh Lambert himself – takes the reins to proffer us his directorial debut. Wilson has become Wan’s go-to everyman; an incredibly likeable leading actor who elsewhere guides us through the merry hell of the Conjuring series. Insidious was always the goofier prospect, prone to weird histrionics and the kind of cheap jump-scares that unfortunately came to typify lazy studio horrors throughout the 2010s.
Returning to this universe now – half a decade since the ropey Insidious: The Last Key – feels like a strange request. Not enough time has elapsed to consider it nostalgic, but a little too much has passed to consider our memories fresh.
Fortunately, Insidious: The Red Door opens with a timely reminder that Josh and his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) had their memories supressed after the nasty events of Chapter 2, putting them in a similar brain-fog to those of us who’ve moved on in the intervening years. We catch up with them 9 years after-the-fact, reunited for Josh’s mother’s funeral (an oddly immaterial footnote) to discover the family fractured. Dalton is off to college and an emotional distance has grown between him and his father. What’s more, Josh is now separated from Renal (Rose Byrne – her character was really called Renal???). A cloud hangs over the family.
Josh extends an olive branch but moody Dalton wants none of it. Troubled by a past that’s been stolen from him, Dalton has become a rude and morose teenager; traits that don’t exactly enamour him to us. Josh, too, is struggling, and The Red Door expends a great amount of goodwill documenting these two men in their respective angry solitude. Wilson matches this tone of drudgery with the murkiest palette of the franchise. Sometimes this movie is glowering, other times it is simply indistinct. A fug.
While the journey is littered with just enough super-annoying “boo!” moments to keep everyone awake, The Red Door sulks like this for a good hour as father and son separately piece together a past that the viewer has already been caught up on. It doesn’t make for the most thrilling of discoveries. It’s really only in the last half hour that Wilson gets to play in the sandbox of Insidious‘ other realm; ‘The Further’. Alas, we’re offered rehashes of past glories and with far less panache. I’d love to see Wilson emerge as an interesting filmmaker, but this debut stutters and stalls more than it ever impresses.
Previously Whannell hasn’t shied from convoluting the timelines and realities that make up this series’ universe, but The Red Door lacks this sense of screwball ingenuity. Scott Teems’ script instead offers cottonmouth dialogue and a simplified version of both ‘The Further’ and its metaphorical purpose in the series, dumbing it down to a tired exercise in confronting trauma. The ultimate ‘solution’ to Dalton’s woes makes very little sense outside of its palatable greetings card sentiment. While this entry seems designed to tie off the storyline for the Lamberts once and for all, it never quite earns its existence in the first place as a protracted continuance. Knowing how these producers operate, one can’t imagine this to be the final (rusty) nail in the Insidious coffin, either.
It’s not a total loss. Sinclair Daniel brings much-needed pluck as Dalton’s irrepressible roommate Chris Winslow. She might grate on some tastes, but without her this would’ve been a sorry chore indeed. She’s not enough to invigorate proceedings all on her lonesome, however. For a series that is at it’s most memorable when contorting like a funhouse mirror, The Red Door is too straitlaced and lacking in ambition to register much of a footprint. This is, sadly, the series’ most diminished return.
The Conjuring franchise is still rolling forward with The Nun 2 next year, and we’ll get Saw X before 2023 is out. If Wan and co. are so adamant about keeping their properties alive at our cinemas I’m moved to ask… Can’t we just have more Malignant movies instead?
The Lost Highway Hotel 