RECENT WATCHES: Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

Of the three highly successful horror franchise that James Wan has had a hand in creating, “Insidious” always feels like the one that slipped through the cracks. (Or into the Further, I suppose.) The yearly “Saw” sequels defined the genre in the 2000s, birthing the torture trend of debatable merit. “The Conjuring” – which “Insidious” always felt like a prototype for – has become the highest grossing series in the genre, thanks to its web of interconnected spin-offs. Every time a new “Insidious” movie comes out, meanwhile, my reaction is always one of bemused disbelief. Maybe that's because the series became the blue print for countless other generic Blumhouse chillers, thoroughly slotting it into the “been-there-done-that” corner of my brain. Nevertheless, they make money. “Insidious: The Red Door” became a surprise hit in summer of 2023, showing that there was still an appetitive for this kind of thing even after the five year break from the last one. It became a feather in the cap of star Patrick Wilson, successfully making the transition into directing with the fifth installment. 

Last time we saw the Lambert family was in 2013's “Insidious: Chapter 2,” undergoing hypnosis to forget their traumatic experiences with the possessing spirits of the Further. It wasn't enough to save Josh and Renai's marriage, the two separating in the last decade. Dalton, the center of the paranormal activity, is now a moody teenager, leaving home to attend art school. His relationship with his dad is tense, despite the best efforts to rekindle their bond. Encouraged by his art teacher, Dalton begins to probe his reoccurring nightmares for artistic inspiration. He begins painting images of an ominous red door while experiencing increasingly frightening visions. Josh digs into his own childhood for answers, discovering that he inherited his astral abilities from his own father. Father and son will have to travel back into the Further if they hope to close the door forever.

“Insidious” has always been a series about childhood trauma, repression of bad memories, and the fear of passing your worst qualities on to your children. By returning to the Lambert family a decade after we first met them, “The Red Door” foregrounds these themes in a big way. The end of “Chapter 2" had them burying their knowledge of the Further via hypnosis which, this installment suggests, maybe wasn't the best way to handle things. Dalton and his sibling admittedly have some fucked-up childhood memories to unpack, what with their father being possessed by the ghost of a serial killer and attempting to kill them. Dalton is a young adult now, played by a now 24 year old Ty Simpkins, and such a childhood did not beget a close relationship with his dad. His parents are divorced – that feels realistic – and he's struggling to forge a relationship with a father who is clearly still processing his own traumatic youth. All of this being triggered by the death of his mom – Barbara Hershey getting a brief cameo as a photograph atop a casket – makes the ideas clearer. As you get older, your childhood fears and hang-ups don't disappear. They merely change shape.

In fact, “The Red Door” comes away feeling like a strangely personal project for Patrick Wilson. This is the first “Insidious” film not to be written solely by Leigh Whannell, Scott Teems of multiple Blumhouse reboots handling scripting duties. It still feels a little bit like a Patrick Wilson vanity project. His wife has a cameo and he duets with Ghost for the cover that plays over the end credits, for further examples of that. That so much of the story revolves around a very divorced dad struggling with reconnecting with his son, processing his mom's death, and putting his own father's legacy to bed makes me wonder if the star/director or someone else working on the sequel wasn't injecting their own issues into the material. This isn't truly an issue until the last act, when “The Red Door” starts to feel less like a horror sequel and more like an especially maudlin therapy session filtered through a genre lens. Much has been written about how pop-psychology speak has infiltrated Hollywood screenwriting. Examples like this, where characters stop to apologize for their mistakes and directly address their personality flaws, are hard not to notice.

While we might be watching Patrick Wilson work through some deeply personal issues of his own in “The Red Door,” it must be said that he has a good grip on this style of horror film. The sequel doesn't focus on the loud jump-scares too much, a concentrated effort being made to build up an eerie atmosphere. More than once, the film deploys the quality gag of a figure lingering off in the distance, unnoticed by the protagonist. This not only sums up the thematic branches of the story, of how the memories of the dead hang around, but also a spooky set-up in its own right. There's a nice layer of fog floating over the ground at times, which always works for me. A sequence set inside an MRI machine slowly builds nicely, utilizing the claustrophobic setting to build up to a potent jolt. Like all “Insidious” movies, this one gets much goofier the further it goes along. Attempts to call-back to earlier installments mean re-visiting Tiny Tim and the Red Faced Demon but it's not badly done.

Despite the many things “Insidious: The Red Door” does right, the sequel still makes a considerable misstep. Josh Lambert is at the center of long stretches of the movie but he's not actually the protagonist of “The Red Door.” As a college student, Ty Simpkins plays Dalton as an angsty, artistic type. He's not an immediately likable character, far too wrapped up in his own Daddy issues. To compensate, the film gives him a sidekick in the form of Sinclair Daniel as Chris Winslow. She is his designated roommate, whose litany of eccentric behavior includes playing the harmonium at odd hours and forcing Dalton to attended an adult baby-themed frat party. The quirks are more irritating than endearing, the film failing to make us care about adult Dalton or his roommate too much. Splitting time between father and son is a flaw already, as it limits the interactions they have together.

“Insidious: The Red Door” often functions as the closing chapter of this particular franchise. Bringing the series back to the Lamberts creates a feeling of events coming full-circle. The conclusion suggests that the Red Door may be closed for good... Except, of course, a money-making horror franchise is rarely allowed to rest. Naturally, there's a last second teaser to suggest the possibility that the story will continue. The question of what the hell the Lipstick-Faced Demon is remains as well. Accordingly, both a sixth installment and a spin-off have been given the greenlight. Whether the saga of the Lambert family is truly concluded, or if these newer installments will follow the ghost-hunting narratives of the middle chapters, remains to be seen. I'm partial to the latter, as these movies tend to be a little better when focusing on that idea. Still, “The Red Door” is better than you'd expect the fourth sequel to be. [6/10]