Insidious: The Red Door

With this year’s “Halloween Month,” I am thinking of doing something similar to what I did a few years ago. Since I said that Friday’s will be “Candyman Month,” I will post a review on a new horror movie on Mondays. This Monday will be “Insidious: The Red Door,” released in 2023.

With only a few exceptions like “Halloween,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “The Conjuring,” “Friday the 13^th,” and so many more, rarely do horror franchises manage to keep a strong and consistent amount of success for more than a few sequels. The pattern looks like tow or maybe three major hits, then a huge downward dive into garbage.

Frank Wilkins said in his review, “Another outlier, though it sagged a wee bit in its middle installments, was the Insidious franchise which bucked the trend of grotesque horror porn in favor of paranormal creeps and crawls which have haunted our dreams since 2008. And no, not even the bold stroke of reuniting the original cast for Insidious: The Red Door, is enough to deliver a satisfying experience.”

About fifteen minutes into the movie, it is evident there’s something missing from this new sequel. This is the first “Insidious” film not written by Leigh Whannell, and you can see that. Despite having the look of an engaging storyline, and the return of Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, and Andrew Astor, the film uses too many boring clichés and weak scares. The result is a boring and forgettable sequel for everyone.

The failure of this film isn’t completely all on director Patrick Wilson. Wilkins notes, “This is Wilson’s first time in the director’s chair and though he does well enough, he often struggles with the film’s haphazard pacing, and poorly executed transitions that leave us grasping to follow the story’s intentions.”

Scott Teems writes the story and Whannel gets a small amount of credit. When we last saw the Lambert family at the end of “Chapter 2,” astral projectors, Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Dalton (Ty Simpkins) were still recovering from so many journeys into The Further, a type of purgatory dimension filled with tortured spirits of the dead.

Kidnapped by a demon and rescued by his dad, Dalton watched Josh become possessed by a ghost which made him go insane through the house, trying to kill the entire family. Dalton went back into The Further trying to rescue Josh.

In the latest sequel, we see Dalton and Josh trying to get on with their lives. Josh is now divorced from Renai (Rose Byrne) and Dalton goes to an east coast art school where an aggressive art teacher (Hiam Abbass) encourages Dalton to explore the connection with light and dark so he can develop his own type of art. Dalton makes a big mistake to take that literally. There are some really dark things that are inside Dalton’s psyche since being hypnotized to forget what happened to the Lambert family ten years ago.

These are themes which become the main themes look at by Teems’ script. The value of family, dealing with trauma, understanding the relationship between light, dark, and balance are all aspects that were seen in the first film. Unfortunately, those aspects don’t work in this new sequel.

Another problem with “Insidious: The Red Door” is the lack of scary moments through the duration of film. Wilkins pointed out, “The original Insidious film was celebrated for its ability to generate genuine terror and tension, but The Red Door falls way short. Whenever the soundtrack goes silent, that’s when something is going to jump out. Wilson, as a director, clearly hasn’t yet perfected the art of effective atmosphere and well-timed jump scares. Loud noises and shock value aren’t enough.”

Sadly, “Insidious: The Red Door” doesn’t hold a candle to the previous films. With a difficult story, weak scares, underdeveloped characters, poor performances, boring cinematography, and a disappointing conclusion, this film fails on just about every level. Everyone can guess that this film is a forgettable entry to a series that already was going downhill. It’s time to stop with this franchise.

If everyone remembers, I thought the first two entries were hilariously bad, but afterwards the franchise just kept getting worse. This one is no exception. I seriously don’t know what they were thinking with this awful sequel. Please do us a favor and stop with this franchise. This is a terrible franchise and I don’t understand why they feel like they should keep making sequels to this. Just stop already!! This is streaming on Netflix so don’t make the mistake of seeing this awful sequel.

Look out this Friday for the continuation of “Candyman Month.”