'Insidious: The Red Door' Review: A Hapless Horror Slog
Insidious: The Red Door’s advertising campaign has been fully centered around a touted return to form. The old cast is back, the classic villains are back, yet most, if not all of the magic that made the first two so special is gone. We’re left with a shell of the franchise in this latest entry, with The Red Door playing like a maligned greatest hits reel for those first two films. You could easily blame the issues on the simple lack of James Wan, but they’re rooted far deeper, taking hold in the narrative and infesting the entire film until what’s left is no more than a hollow shell of what could’ve been.
This is Patrick Wilson’s directorial debut and, to be fair, he’s not done a bad job. There are a few decent stretches of tension, and the setup for a select couple of scares is admittedly good. But said scares never really last beyond the loud noises that initiate them, leaving no lasting impact and making them all worse in retrospect. One in particular may stick, but even then, it isn’t groundbreaking by any means.
No part of The Red Door is even trying to break ground, and that’s a problem. From the basic conflicts up to their rushed resolutions, it settles. Fine visuals, easy jokes, repetitive build-up, cheap jumpscares, it settles for all of it. Everything technically follows, sure; the cardinal conflict may have been done a thousand times, but it still makes sense in light of where we last left these characters. It’s just that there isn’t enough time nor intrigue to make something unique out of it here, so these fan-favorites are just bound to an array of predictable story beats.
The dialogue being incredibly dull doesn’t help. Lines are often forced in the name of driving home a big moment, and conversations hardly ever feel realistic. At one point, Ty Simpkins’ Dalton earnestly refers to his younger brother as “little brother” over the phone. Simpkins’ timid delivery confirms the oddity of the line, and that’s just one example of the awkward, technical dialogue that plagues this film. The small stuff adds up with things like that.
The performances aren’t enough to give the film any sort of edge either. Nobody is bad per-say, but nobody really feels committed either. The one highlight, in addition to Patrick Wilson (because of course) was Sinclair Daniel, who turns in a surprisingly funny and nuanced performance as Dalton’s college roommate Chris. She’ll leave you wishing she had a more substantial role.
Funnily enough, Chris is one of two characters you’ll be wishing had a bigger role. The second of the two is the franchise-famous “red-faced demon”, who was very prevalent in all the marketing, and with the film being pushed as a return to form, he was at the forefront. In the final product, without spoiling specifics, he’s shockingly listless. Not a single scare is predicated on him as a threat, and really, there is no consistent prevailing threat in this entire movie. One brutal miscalculation in a sea of them.
Much like red-face, there are a few ghouls that we keep seeing, but the nature of the scares restricts any sort of development for them. Every scare is the same, and they all end almost immediately after the jump. There is no lingering fear-factor. When a scene starts, you know right then if it’s going to be a scare scene or not. There is no effort, not in the camera nor in any other department, to shadow it. This disappointingly includes the score, which mostly loses the trademark strings and has no dominant presence in the film. Another departure from the first two results in another miss.
The scariest parts of the film are actually just Dalton’s paintings, as he’s now an art student in college, taking classes and trying to unlock his “inner-self”, in a sense. The art has an uncanny style, and lingers over every scene in his dorm room. Their malevolent presence and his constant need to create is a compelling plot-point; it draws (pun intended) back to his penchant for drawing as a child in the first film, and there’s one big moment in the third act in which one of his paintings becomes crucial to the plot, and it’s a genuinely great idea. That scene is one of the only ones in the film that feels fully realized, and perfectly executed.
In the way of positives, the first five minutes also deserves a mention. We open nine years after the second film on a surprisingly somber scene that works to both catch us up on what we’ve missed with the family and to set up the driving force of conflict and emotion through the rest of the film. Shots and gazes linger, it’s deliciously dreary. To boot, we get one of the most unsettling shots in the entire film, and it holds for a while, before leaving you hanging and opting to save the tension for later instead of pointlessly jumping you at the very beginning. If only that tact was present throughout the rest of the film.
Regardless, we’re then treated to a neat opening credits sequence (which is refreshing in its own right) that tours through various faces and iconography that relate to the first two films, all through Dalton’s drawings. Familiar faces, old sketches, and suggestive shadows round off the opening, bookending substance with style. It’s a sequence that suggests Patrick Wilson had more in the directorial tank for this one than what actually made the cut. An extended cut could greatly benefit this film if such footage exists. Adding a little extra time to all the scares, and perhaps a bit more breathing room for an ending that is certainly imaginative but not quite fleshed out and, who knows, maybe we’d be looking at a different picture.
Unfortunately, we’re stuck with a 100-minute faux-fear-fest for the time being. Stripped of what popularized the Insidious franchise in the first place, and what has immortalized it now, Insidious: The Red Door is a near total waste of time. Unless you’re an Insidious super-fan, you can safely skip this one, assured that you aren’t missing anything. Let’s hope that the post-credits scene is moot, and this franchise gets some much needed time behind closed doors; red or otherwise, as long as they lock from the outside.