‘All I ever wanted was to be a good dad…’
It’s best to accept it now. Insidious and The Conjuring are not for me. The continued success of both franchises is utterly baffling to me. They are pretty much the only long-running horror franchises that I don’t love. And why am I lumping them together? Well, aside from the crossover in terms of personnel (Leigh Whannell, James Wan, Patrick Wilson etc) they are just the same thing. A haunted house attraction dressed up as a feature-length film…
Some years after the events of one of the previous films (the specifics don’t matter – none of this matters) the Lambert family are older and more fractured than ever. Following the decision to partially erase the memories of patriarch Josh (Wilson) and eldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins), both characters are walking around in a haze, mistrustful of each other and uncertain of their place in the world. Rose Byrne is back too as the mother of the Lambert family but is given very little to do. New characters include Sinclair Daniels’ annoying wise-cracking sidekick figure Chris Winslow and a character with the moniker Nick the Dick (Peter Dager) – a reminder that this was released in the year of our Lord 2023.
And this is the problem. The Red Door is the fifth film in this franchise and it’s still singing from the same tired songbook as the source material. Wilson makes his directorial debut and while the cinematography is competent there is no hint of any kind of style or panache here. It’s just more of the same except with evermore diminishing returns. The scares aren’t scary. The laughs certainly aren’t funny. And despite a decent turn from Simpkins and a good performance from Wilson in front of the camera, in a world in which horror films have never felt more vibrant and innovative, the Insidious franchise already feels like an anachronism. Unfortunately, people prefer a jump scare to existential dread. They prefer a loud noise to tension building. And so, these shit will continue to be churned out and I’ll continue to watch them and moan about them until I’m dead. Insidious indeed.