Blumhouse’s first completely original series offers a sense of homecoming every time a new Insidious film comes out, and this is apparent in Insidious: The Red Door even after two prequels that turned the attention to Lin Shaye’s character Elise. Patrick Wilson comes back to the story as an actor and for the first time as a director, returning it to the Lambert family who had been shattered physically on their way through The Further into which they were pulled by their excursions. This brings us full circle back to the Lamberts while also offering them an opportunity to confront what happened in those first two films in terms of how they changed them. It gives The Red Door fertile ground for staging a more intellectual but less scary version of those quintessential Blumhouse movies.
The events take place nine years later than those shown in Insidious 2 with slightly altered ending where father-son pair astral projectors Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Dalton (Ty Simpkins) decide that “it’s better not knowing” anything about the past or abilities when moving through life. However, as we all know too well, blissful ignorance does not last long; both boys could not remember anything particular about that day when such things like Lipstick-Face Demon attacked them, but still their whole life was broken due psychological trauma that kept Josh from making any sound sentence during his increasing brain fog. In each case, Dalton has found himself haunted by such incidents yet love for art – moreover his normal drawings from previous movie are mentioned – helped him remain balanced. So it is no surprise that soon after there he departs for college and some family matters make others’ lives harder than ever before– time when soul-sucking creatures try once again crossing over to our world.
In his debut as a director Patrick Wilson gets the best of both worlds in this family melodrama/supernatural story mash-up. The Further has always been a charmingly lo-fi horror locale, but it is only with The Red Door that it seems to be a microcosm for the character arcs its inhabitants are on. Dalton’s art teacher (Hiam Abbass) tells him to “sink further” into his subconscious as he works on his big project: a painting of a red door he’s seeing in his nightmares. With each of these trance-like sessions, more about what happened years ago when they were brought up by some spirits starts coming back to them and also how intense their relationship has become between Dalton and Josh due to the hunger of twisted spirits. There is nothing more than this shared “sins of the father” storyline and path back to each other which can serve as an ultimate thematic base for evil entity’s stores while Wilson and Simpkins’ sincere performances make it even more substantial. Simpkins especially walks a fine line in portraying the predictable surliness of an 18-year-old towards Josh at one end, and also being genuinely suspicious of him too.
By and large, this balance is stricken very well by Simpkins and maintains an element of vulnerability about a character who could have easily become a brooding art kid. Josh has been taking the same path as Dalton in chasing away his demons. Haunted by Further’s entitities as a child, he has always struggled to come to terms with the spectral attacks on his family but here, his silence-that which sees him through things-is finally catching up with him. Wilson plays Josh in The Red Door as a burdened shell compared to the rowdy family man of the first two movies and excels at those moments when the character barely clings together. Renai (Rose Byrne) and Foster (Andrew Astor), on the other hand are left with less depth than characters that sound like sounding boards only for their struggles; typically done through over-the-phone exposition dumps that pretty much kill pace.
As director, Wilson’s horror chops are at their most fruitful during The Red Door’s luxurious long takes, and he’s able to sustain significant stretches of dread around that strength. Scared us out of our peripheral vision trust issues the films tend to be better building up towards jumps rather than delivering them. As soon as he agrees to go into an MRI machine (great time for a pee break, claustrophobes), you know what is going to happen next—but smart edits from Wilson combined with well-escalating panic during his performance keep that screw turning almost unbearably slowly until it can be cranked down again with its inevitable punchline pay-off. During daylight scares too, there are instances where Wilson pushes this sensibility further such as in one early instance of a spirit appearing in a single unbroken shot lasting almost one minute re-establishing a creeping creepy tone that has always been one of the series’ trademarks. It should not come as any surprise then that from inception- also being James Wan’s frequent collaborator- and with his eye for the keynotes in Insidious, Wilson’s confident execution of these ideas gives The Red Door the same feel that Wan achieved in Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2 only now it makes more sense of the storyline.
Surely, though, what often follow these marathon dread filled rides to the top of the roller coaster are noisy explosions of demonic rage or ghostly malcontents punctuated by discordant string hits, and one area where The Red Door has diminishing returns is through its potency in terms of those moments. There are a lot of jump scares that happen throughout the movie that don’t always result from minutes upon minutes carefully layered tension or misdirection. These moments can come out of nowhere; as I have a nasty scratch on my notepad because they can be so powerful when you do not see them coming, but almost none of The Red Door’s attempts to scare you seem to be changing anything meaningful about how this is done.
Wilson does not shy away from exploiting the internal conflicts of the family and uses that as a backdrop to discuss this. On the other hand, The Red Door is set in college hence we see things a bit different compared to those in Lambert’s house. Despite some eerie moments usually found in such places like classrooms, dorm rooms, and frat houses there isn’t much that directly relates Dalton’s time at school with these happenings as opposed to his family horror which clicks. The Red Door hints at the possibilities of exploring complicated new avenues with the setting of college by showing him as an alcoholic ghost kid who could have had experiences similar to Dalton’s when he was growing up; it also suggests that it could have been a more honest examination of Dalton’s relationship with these kids who died from some kind of tragedy. To me, this would have worked better if only one less lambert were involved.
But changing location means that past information can be repeated and Chris (Sinclair Daniel), who is Dalton’s roommate, provides a good antithesis for such scenes. How quickly Chris is willing to accept Dalton’s astral powers and the resultant paranormal activity calls to mind Insidious’ bumbling ghost hunters Specs and Tucker. This makes Daltons reaction at the end reasonable given that chris has not made supernatural thing seem ordinary rather than horrible or scary like pitchers do.The Red Door relies on Chris’ calmness and indifference in The Red Door; she never loses face no matter how severe situations get – this is why she remains so strong throughout.
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