'Insidious: The Red Door' Movie Review: A Lowres Imitation Of Generic Horror Films
Express press service
Insidious: The Red Door is an interesting film. Not for anything you'd expect from a horror movie, but for a completely different reason. Insidious: The Red Gate avoids touching on "so bad it's good" territory and destroys a perfectly adequate building. While the film's good moments aren't good enough, its not-so-good moments still aren't enough. The result is a messy, mind-numbing mess that unlocks new levels of tedium with each passing story. You don't even want to have enough energy to turn off your brain and enjoy cheap thrills, just not enough.
A few years after the horrific events depicted in the first two films, the Lambert family fell apart. Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) struggles to bond with his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins), and a series of events accidentally bring back flashbacks that bring a supernatural entity back to haunt the Lambert family. The film opens with a promising emotional core built on the strained relationship between father and son. Although the third film is mainly about father and son reconciling their differences. Aside from the scene where Josh takes Dalton to college, the characters are rarely seen interacting or speaking to each other. They talk on the phone, but the emotional weight of these scenes doesn't quite register, making us care less for these characters.
Franchise star Patrick Wilson helms the project and makes his film debut. Patrick delivered a performance consistent enough to inspire confidence every time he stepped into the frame. While he approaches the themes and emotional underpinnings of the story with great insight, there is a remarkable carelessness in formulating interpretations. Sometimes the characters portray emotions strongly, and sometimes the actors mimic a vague idea of how such a character would react in such a film. Rose Byrne, in particular, walks in and out of the frame with expressions that scream cold indifference to the film's entire existence.
The movie offers some good scares, but they pale in comparison to what the series started with. Technical elements such as sound design, camerawork, lighting, make-up and special effects work hard to make the supernatural beings barely scary. However, the idea of what these beings are trying to accomplish doesn't excite us for the usual reasons of "trying to enter our world to kill people and what not." Even ghosts must follow story rules to keep us engaged. Fake, deceptive Hollywood horror movies must stop. Despite being a staple of horror films since the 1970s, a ghost or demonic entity that appears to vomit in its victim's face seems to have outstayed its welcome. Can Hollywood focus on scaring its fearful audience rather than needlessly offending them?
There are some half-hearted attempts to explore things like mental illness and generational trauma, but it just doesn't work because we don't care about the characters. Much of our indifference to these characters can be attributed to the lack of genuine moments between them. The central characters rarely interact with each other in person, and characters who do interact frequently (such as Ty Simpkins and Sinclair Daniels' characters) have one-dimensional relationships that quickly develop as the story concludes.
Perhaps one of the main problems with Insidious: The Red Door is that it feels like a typical horror movie from a very slight perspective. However, it gives a sense of innocence in a way that deals with human emotions and character development. It looks like a long version of a very fake celebrity impersonation video, but it also looks distorted and unnatural.
Insidious: The Red Door
Director: Patrick Wilson
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Lynn Shaye, Rose Byrne, Sinclair Daniels
Rating: 1.5/5
