Insidious: The Red Door, 2023.
Directed by Patrick Wilson.
Starring Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Rose Byrne, Sinclair Daniel, Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Hiam Abbass.
SYNOPSIS:
The Lambert family still haven’t rid themselves of their past ghosts.
How do you know when a movie franchise has run out of steam? There are many tell-tale signs but none quite so obvious as when a studio has to give hand the directing reins over to the lead actor, who won’t reprise their role unless there is something more in it for them than just a paycheck.
Insidious: The Red Door is not only the fifth installment in the Insidious franchise but it also marks the directorial debut of Patrick Wilson, an actor who has become something of a fixture in the horror genre over the past decade thanks to his starring roles in this series and also The Conjuring franchise, ruling out a crossover, which is a shame as these two James Wan-created universes are ripe for it. Nevertheless, Wilson has gone on to the heady heights of the DCEU with an appearance in Aquaman (and its upcoming sequel), as well as In the Tall Grass, Midway and Teen Titans Go! so he is getting around, which begs the question as to why he would come back to this franchise, especially as his character’s story arc was wrapped up in Insidious: Chapter 2 way back in 2013.
It is because somebody decided that there was another story to tell and the chance to direct would be the fruit to entice Patrick Wilson back to the fold. That same somebody also probably realised that killing off Lin Shaye – the real star of the franchise; no disrespect to Patrick Wilson, but her presence is what audiences returned for again and again – and then bringing her back for prequels was not the best move for longevity. 2018s Insidious: The Last Key was a fairly workmanlike mainstream horror movie but Lin Shaye’s immense likability carried a very thin plot to make the movie a lot more watchable than it would have been without her, and she does return here in a very short online clip watched on a laptop because… well, the producers realised they had to crowbar her in somewhere.
So, what is this story that had to be told so much that not only Patrick Wilson but the bulk of the cast from the first two movies came back to tell? Well, Josh (Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) Lambert are now divorced but are both attending the funeral of Josh’s mother (played by Barbara Hershey in the first two movies, but there wasn’t enough in the kitty to entice her back for this) with their three children. Josh offers to drive eldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) to university, but Dalton does not like spending time with his dad, and the two fall out when Josh tries to open up to his son about his mental health and Dalton doesn’t respond favourably. Most of their fractious relationship comes from the fact that Dalton cannot remember being aged ten, which is when the events of the first movie happened, and suspects his parents have lied to him by telling him he had meningitis and was in a coma. The thing is, Josh cannot remember the events of the second movie, when he was possessed and tried to kill his family, and things just aren’t going well for either man.
Anyway, during an art class Dalton’s teacher encourages her pupils to dig deep into their emotions and feelings, which Dalton does and, of course, drags up the relics of his past by drawing a door that he keeps dreaming of. The door is actually the door that leads to The Further, the spectral zone where Dalton and Josh had their previous adventures, and when Dalton begins to astral project, he and Josh must overcome their differences and return to their pasts to put the ghosts to bed.
Which is the plot on paper, but Patrick Wilson seems to have other ideas as what really happens is not a lot of horror and quite a bit of indie movie-style pondering about fathers and sons, and the healing strength of family. All very touching, but we saw this three movies ago when we were treated to the Lambert family overcoming their ordeal and facing the demons of The Further with Lin Shaye’s Elise and her ghost-hunting partners Specs (co-writer Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), who also make an appearance here on Dalton’s laptop. When we saw the family triumph at the end of the second movie the sentimentality had been earned as we had just spent a couple of hours watching them go through hell – almost literally – and come out the other side unharmed; here, Josh goes to the doctor to get his head checked (in probably the creepiest scene of the movie, but if you’ve watched the trailer then that particular fright has been robbed from you) and not a lot comes of it before he traces his family history and we learn about his father, which leads to nothing more than a climactic scene that totally rips off the ending of Poltergeist II. While this is going on, Dalton goes to a university frat party, which leads to a mind-numbingly tedious setup that makes little sense and introduces a ‘character’ called Nick the Dick, and he is, so they got that right.
As a continuation of the Lamberts’ story from the first two movies, Insidious: The Red Door is painfully drawn out, dour and lacking pretty much everything that those movies had, swapping James Wan’s effective use of creepy imagery and well-timed jump scares for a dull family drama that doesn’t really have anywhere to go apart from the obvious ‘forgetting past wrongs and coming together’ place that it ends up in, except that Patrick Wilson – being an actor – is not really interested in the genre tropes and filmmaking tricks that got us to this point and just wants to tell a story, except there isn’t really one to tell. There are a couple of moments that attempt to tap into the vibe of the earlier movies, but they just feel tacked on, like somebody had to remind the director to put in a couple of jump scares because that is what these movies do.
And what of the Lipstick Demon that was so impactful in that first movie? He is still here, lurking around The Further like an end-of-level boss from a video game. Do we finally get to know who he is, what he wants or how we can destroy him? Banish that thought from your minds because he is literally in the movie for a couple of minutes, again likely because somebody told Patrick Wilson that the 110-minute horror movie is nearly over and there hasn’t been much horror yet.
Patrick Wilson is a fine actor and a welcoming presence in any movie that he is in, and if directing is his thing then on a technical level he has the skills to do something in the future as he does use the camera to good effect in certain scenes and the movie does have a spooky look to it. It may just be that horror – especially this ghost-train style of mainstream horror – may not be his genre as when you get to this stage of a franchise, and a franchise that has a reputation for being a crowd-pleaser when it comes to the scares, you have to do more than just have your main characters mope about or shout at each other about things that happened before but not actually advance anything, show anything or address the only reason a fifth movie was called for, and that was to have Lipstick Demon come back.
If it is any consolation, there is a post-credit shot (and the credits are worth sitting through, as Patrick Wilson also sings the closing credits song with Scandinavian metal band Ghost, in what turns out to be his best contribution to the franchise) that suggests this may not be the final movie in this franchise, but unless we get the Lipstick Demon/Elise face-off in The Further that has been telegraphed since the first movie, there is nowhere else for the Insidious franchise to go, and what Insidious: The Red Door proves is that as much as Patrick Wilson didn’t need another Insidious movie, unfortunately neither did we.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★
Chris Ward
