The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D
Insidious: The Red Door breaks the tradition of odd-numbered Insidious films being any good. Following the last two entries that serves as prequels to the original movie, The Red Door finally provides a sequel to Insidious: Chapter 2. However, Chapter 2, which was essentially an unnecessary and prolonged epilogue to the original, already proved that there really wasn’t any more story to tell. The Red Door hammers home that fact and is one of the most unnecessary, meandering horror sequels in some time. And that’s really saying something.
Watching the opening credits, I discovered that this entry is written by Scott Teems, writer of Halloween Ends and the remake of Firestarter. That’s the movie equivalent of getting onto a plane and hearing that your airline pilot today will be Mr. Magoo. The Red Door picks up a decade after the events of Chapter 2, which makes sense since the second entry came out ten years ago in 2013. Josh Lambert (played again by Patrick Wilson) and his son, Dalton (played again by Ty Simpkins), both only have vague memories of the events of the first two films after having their memories wiped. In the interim, Josh was divorced by his wife (played again by Rose Byrne) because she struggled with being the only member of the family that remembers Josh going full-on Shining and trying to kill them all with a hammer in Chapter 2. But Dalton goes away to college and this, for some reason, causes these events to resurface in their minds and spooky shenanigans of the PG-rated variety start happening. Oh, and jump scares. Lots and lots of jump scares.
I actually do appreciate that the film largely revolves around the characters trying to remember the events of Chapter 2 because I was in the same boat. I watched that movie once when it came out in 2013, shrugged my shoulders and promptly forgot about it. Considering that The Red Door’s plot completely hinges on knowledge of Chapter 2 (a film that’s only marginally more memorable than my day at work today), it was nice that I was rediscovering that movie’s plot along with the main characters. I wish that I could give the screenwriter enough credit to assume that this was a meta commentary on the forgettable nature of Chapter 2, but this movie was written by Scott Teems. Therefore, I have to assume no such clever thing and that the film assumed that audiences would enjoy watching characters figure out something that they already know for 90 minutes.
This is the directorial debut of Patrick Wilson and that’s a damn shame because I do like him. Even in forgettable crap like this and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, I find him entertaining and endearing. As a performer, the same can be said here. Anytime he is on screen, I want to like the movie. I just can’t because the film doesn’t give him anything interesting to do. His son, on the other hand, is a whiny, sulking bore that sucks the life out of the film every time he is on screen. As the film is essentially divided equally between the father and the son, watching this wet blanket mope around the screen for half of the running time is a real drag. I will give special mention to the one person at the college that puts up with his emo bullshit, as that character (played by Sinclair Daniel) actually has a pulse and a personality and makes the college scenes almost watchable. Almost. Despite getting third-billing, Rose Byrne’s part is basically an extended cameo and she is completely wasted here. This is possibly the film’s single biggest miscalculation, as the chemistry between Wilson and Byrne is largely what carried the first two films. Marginalizing her in favor of the son is a major mistake that removes the emotional core of the series and left me fighting a nagging urge to doze off in the theater.
The film isn’t scary at all and abandons any of the atmosphere of the first movie for an endless series of jump scares, all of which are clearly choreographed well ahead of time. I will say, though, that my theater was pretty full and the primarily teenaged crowd was terrified. Nothing would be happening in the movie and these kids were jumping and screaming like it was the scariest thing that they had ever seen. It’s weird because I remember that, when I was a teenager, the goal was to seem tough and not be frightened by things. Now it seems like teenagers in a theater are in a contest to see who can appear to be the most chickenshit. This kind of audience would annoy me for a better film, but it honestly became my only source of entertainment. I’m not even sure who the villain is in this movie; it’s largely just a series of ghosts appearing without any rhyme, reason or narrative drive. The red-faced demon from the original movie appears a couple of times, but is he the villain? If so, what he is doing? What’s his goal? What the fuck is even happening in this movie?
Many critics have referred to this as the final entry in the Insidious franchise despite the fact that the sixth movie was already announced months ago. Yippee. It’s pretty clear that this was never intended to be a franchise when it was started over a decade ago and, without a central villain or protagonist, there is no thread that ties these movies together in any coherent way and the lack of focus makes it painfully obvious that dollar signs are the only reason why people keep trying to continue the series. There is just nothing left to do here. Given my phrasing, I’m sure this will all be solved by the next movie, tentatively titled Thread: An Insidious Tale, when that bores the shit out of me in a couple of years.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insidious:_The_Red_Door#/media/File:Insidious_the_red_door.png
