Insidious: The Red Door Review: Horror Sequel Does Nothing New

Insidious: The Red Door is set nine years after Insidious: Chapter 2. In that time, the kids have grown up, the Lamberts have gotten a divorce, and Josh’s mother, Lorraine, has died. We open on her funeral. Josh (Patrick Wilson) has a strained relationship with his kids, especially Dalton (Ty Simpkins), who starts art school at the beginning of the film. Dalton and Josh have no memory of their time in The Further, or even that anything mystical happened. Dalton just accepts that he was in a coma and Josh has had a “fuzzy brain” since then.

Josh and Dalton begin to experience the same astral projection and hauntings that occurred in the first two movies. With Josh, it seems to begin with an MRI; with Dalton, his art professor tells her students to “dig deeper” and, well, Dalton digs a little too deep. Separately, Josh and Dalton experience various monsters and ghosts, with no knowledge of their history as “travelers.”

Insidious: The Red Door offers nothing new to the franchise. Neither Josh nor Dalton have any new powers, nor do they see anything new or face any new challenges. It’s basically the same story as the first two Insidious movies, except that instead of not knowing what is going on because it is new, they don’t know what is going on because they don’t remember.

Patrick Wilson makes his directorial debut with this movie. Frankly, I don’t think he is meant to direct horror. Maybe it’s because it is too easy to compare this film to the first two Insidious films, which were directed by horror legend James Wan. Wilson relies on fast cuts and close-up shots, which made some scenes unclear — but not scary. There weren’t any slow, quiet moments that built the tension to suffocating levels. Most of the jump scares were punctuated with sharp noises on the soundtrack.

Overall, the scariest scene was the one where Josh gets an MRI, as seen in all the trailers. That scene had the clanging noise of the MRI plus the claustrophobia of the machine itself to make for a good fright. Other than that, there were plenty of ghosts/ghouls/monsters, but none of them seemed very scary.

My favorite part of the movie was Sinclair Daniel’s Chris — Dalton’s accidental roommate and new friend. She is weird and funny and offered a nice opposite to Dalton and his morose personality. She kind of acts as a stand-in for Elise, Tucker, and Specs, who are obviously not part of this movie but do get cameos via YouTube videos. Chris does some research for Dalton, bringing him the videos, though Dalton does not recognize any of them.

Ultimately, despite the occasional highlight, Insidious: The Red Door doesn’t bring anything new to the franchise. It’s the same story, redone a decade later without any extra reasons to watch.

SCORE: 6/10

As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 6 equates to “Decent.” It fails to reach its full potential and is a run-of-the-mill experience.

Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Insidious: The Red Door review.

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