Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Patrick Wilson
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor, Lin Shaye, Sinclair Daniel, Hiam Abbass
You have to wonder if James Wan regularly kicks himself for having
cast Patrick Wilson in both Insidious and
The Conjuring. Not that Wilson isn't a good actor (he's too good for both of these
franchises, if you ask me), but casting him in the opening instalments of
both series instantly erased the potential for a crossover, which surely
would have happened by now. Both series are arguably too stale at this
point but if say, six or seven years ago Wan had teamed up
Insidious's ghost-hunters Elise, Specs and Tucker with The Conjuring's Warrens (obligatory comment about how that series has somewhat
rehabilitated a pair of real life con artists), it would have packed out
cinemas.
While The Conjuring has kept itself relevant by spawning a
seemingly never-ending assortment of spin-offs, the gears of the
Insidious series can be heard grinding to a halt with this
fifth instalment. Insidious: The Red Door joins the likes of
Halloween 5, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and 2022's
annoyingly titled Scream in becoming the disc in the boxset horror fans are least likely to
reach for on future series' rewatches.
Having become the face of the "Waniverse," Wilson now gets the chance to
direct. While he doesn't disgrace himself behind the camera, there's a
naivete in his direction that suggests horror may not be the most fitting
genre should he pursue a career wielding the megaphone.
The Red Door opens with a recap of the conclusion of the
second film (parts three and four were prequels that took place before the
first movie), in which Josh Lambert (Wilson) and his young son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) were hypnotised so they wouldn't be haunted by the memories of the
supernatural terrors visited upon them in the first two movies.
A decade later, all is not well with the Lambert family. Josh's mother
has just died (for a woman as good looking as Barbara Hershey, her
funeral is awfully sparsely attended; surely there would be a host of
aging male admirers hiding behind trees?); he's several years into a
divorce from his wife Renai (Rose Byrne); and the now college bound
Dalton refuses to speak to him, making for an uncomfortable car ride to
his new school.
Once on campus, Dalton's memories of the terror he experienced as a kid
begin to slowly flood back. Triggered by his aggressive art teacher (Hiam Abbass), he begins to paint a picture of a red door,
but can't make sense of what it means. Meanwhile Josh is similarly
beginning to realise that something is buried in his mind, leading to
father and son inevitably returning to "The Further" once more.
I complain a lot about how so many modern horror movies and thrillers
fail to build suspense because they don't give the audience more
information than the protagonists. By default,
The Red Door should be suspenseful from the off. We know a
lot more than Josh and Dalton because we witnessed the events of the first
two movies whereas they've both had their memories erased. But Wilson and
screenwriter Scott Teems never make much of this advantage they've
been gifted. Wilson does put together some mildly unsettling moments in
which shadowy and out of focus figures approach in the background, but
they lack the sort of payoff a more comfortable genre director might
deliver.
Rather than exploiting our knowledge of this world to create suspense,
The Red Door too often makes us sit through what feels like
a retread of the first movie, right down to another boring climax in The
Further. A problem I've had with this series from the off is that its
threat is too metaphysical to be relatably scary. A bloke chasing you with
a big knife is tangibly terrifying, but it's never quite clear what threat
the spectral baddies of this series really pose. The series' reluctance to
kill off characters of note doesn't help, and the one major character it
did kill off, Lin Shaye's Elise, is sorely missed here, though she
does pop up briefly via a YouTube clip. Shaye brought some heart to an
otherwise vacuous series, and it was refreshing to see a horror movie in
which the heroine was a woman in her seventies rather than the usual
fresh-faced twentysomethings.
Early on, Wilson gives himself some dramatic scenes that remind us of the
potential he arguably squandered by devoting so much of his career to a
pair of mediocre horror franchises. This may well represent his departure
from the Waniverse (though I wouldn't put money on it), and I for one look
forward to seeing if he can live up to the potential he displayed in early
roles like Hard Candy and Little Children.
Insidious: The Red Door is on
UK/ROI VOD now.
