Insidious: The Red Door review.
Insidious: The Red Door serves as a legacy sequel to the first two movies of the Insidious franchise. The break didn’t afford them time to find any new tricks, unfortunately.
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Insidious: The Red Door
Directed by Patrick Wilson
Screenplay by Scott Teems
Starring Ty Simpkins, Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Andrew Astor and Lin Shaye
Insidious: The Red Door Review
Ah the legacy sequel. A concept so exciting that Jamie Lee Curtis resurrects Laurie Strode every 20 years or so. The most interesting aspect of the legacy sequel is time. In Halloween H20 we see Laurie Strode struggling to deal with the trauma of the events 20 years earlier. Halloween (2018) gives us a version of the character who has been preparing for her boogeyman’s return for four decades. Scream 4 shows us a Sidney Prescott who has overcome her trauma in the 11 years since the last Ghostface attack. Scream (2022) a version that has seen it all and is done with it. Insidious: The Red Door takes a different angle on the legacy sequel than the above. Because its two main characters don’t remember what happened in the previous movies.
Dalton (Ty Simpkins) heads off to college still unaware of the circumstances of his childhood coma and the events that followed. His father Josh (Patrick Wilson) has seen his life fall apart as his foggy memory consumes him. Each set out on a quest to find the truth about hidden family secrets…opening doors that should remain closed forever.
The problem with Insidious: The Red Door is that we already know the answer to the questions Dalton and Josh are asking. While it makes sense on paper to make the ending of Chapter 2 (Dalton and Josh having their memory wiped) …it doesn’t make for a great cinematic story. Our memories haven’t been wiped. We already know the end game of their journey.
The Insidious movies have always been slowly paced and The Red Door is no different. The lack of mystery adds to the unease of the pacing…while adding nothing to the tension. As character studies…there is a lot here. As a horror movie…there isn’t. Dalton learns that he can astral project…which we already know. He learns the hard way that doing so can unleash spirits from The Further. We already know that too. Josh spends most of the film trying to understand why his mind is failing him. If you saw Chapter 2…you already know why.
Now, as this review stated at the beginning, the most exciting thing about legacy sequels is the passage of time. As a result, discovering what the Lambert family is up to is more interesting than what they do during the story itself. Josh and Renai (Rose Byrne) are now divorced, and Josh has been failing as a father. After watching through the series recently (and as discussed on our podcast) this was the only acceptable circumstances for the Lambert family to be found in. Josh was a problematic husband to be kind. That’s before he became possessed by a demon and tried to kill his family.
These movies tend to let the evil that men do off the hook…so it’s nice to see someone face the consequences of their actions. Dalton is an introverted art major who, like his father, knows something isn’t right inside of his mind. That lack of understanding, caused by the mind wipe at the end of Chapter 2, leads to the cycle beginning again. You can’t keep a door closed if you don’t know not to open it.
There is some fan service in Insidious: The Red Door. All legacy sequels have them. Here it is in the form of cameos. If you’re hoping to see fan favorites Elise (Lin Shaye) or her cohorts Specs and Tucker for more than a moment…you’ll be disappointed. They exist now in the form of YouTube clips explaining astral projection. Relics from the past of the franchise. Even walking MacGuffin Carl makes a brief appearance. Byrne’s Renai is limited to a supporting role. Which…honestly happened in Chapter 2 as well.
Josh and Dalton search for their answers…accidentally bringing trouble back into their lives. This could have been avoided if these secrets hadn’t been kept in the first place. You can’t bury the past and you can’t overcome familial trauma by hiding it away. It takes some time for The Red Door to bring us back to the familiar haunts of The Further…and when it gets there it feels too of the past to be fresh. Some decent jump scares notwithstanding, The Red Door is about revisiting traumas…not inflicting some fresh ones.
You’re left asking the same thing about Insidious: The Red Door that you have about every sequel in the franchise: Did we need this? If you want to check in with the Lambert family after a long time away…you’ll get that here. If you want to see new ideas or a modern take…you won’t.
Scare Value
The Insidious franchise continues to be an odd one. There’s no truly bad sequel in the bunch. There also isn’t one that feels necessary. It’s always fun to revisit characters after a long period of time…but The Red Door spends all of its time waiting for them to uncover a mystery that we already know about. If you were desperate for the further adventures of the Lambert family…you’ll find enough of that here. If you are looking for something new…open a different door.
2.5/5
Insidious: The Red Door Link
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