Movie Review Insidious The Red Door

Insidious The Red Door (2023) 

Directed by Patrick Wilson

Written by Scott Teems 

Starring Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Sinclair Daniel, Rose Byne, Lin Shaye 

Release Date July 7th, 2023 

Published July 7th, 2023 

The key to the Insidious franchise is the wildly brilliant mind of writer-director Leigh Whannell. His consistently terrifying and inventive work on each of the Insidious films, co-writing and directing the first two and providing the screenplay for Insidious The Last Key, are proof that he's one of the modern auteurs of the horror genre. Thus when I saw that he'd neither directed nor provided the screenplay for the latest Insidious movie, Insidious The Red Door, I was immediately skeptical. My skepticism peaked further when it was announced that star Patrick Wilson would be making his directorial debut with Insidious The Red Door. 

That's not intended as a negative judgment of Wilson's work before I had seen it, rather just a manifestation of my overall skepticism of an Insidious sequel without the direct influence of the franchises creator and steward. Whannell does make a cameo in Insidious The Red Door, but his presence behind the camera and the keyboard becomes notable as the film goes on. Insidious The Red Door is lacking the essential ingredients of an Insidious movie, those that Whannell's fertile, creative, and slightly disturbing mind had always provided. 

In his directorial debut, Patrick Wilson also stars in Insidious The Red Door, reprising his role as Joshua Lambert. As a child, Joshua discovered that he could travel into a nether-realm called The Further. There he would be menaced by demons who would attempt to steal his body to return themselves to the real world. Joshua's mother, played by Barbara Hershey, was able to rescue her son with the help of a psychic medium named Elise Rainer (Lin Shaye). Through Elise, Joshua was made to forget his ability to travel into The Further. 

Cut to many years later, Josh is married to Renai (Rose Byrne), and they have three kids including their oldest, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), who has been exhibiting some odd behavior. When Dalton ends up in a coma, his grandmother recognizes what is happening and is forced to confront Joshua's past. She once again calls on Elise to save her family. The solution to the problems was supposed to be once again hypnotizing Josh and also Dalton, so that they forget about The Further. Naturally, this won't be enough to keep their memories at bay for long and that's where the story of Insidious The Red Door kicks in. 

We are nearly a decade in the future from when Dalton and Joshua were hypnotized into forgetting The Further and both, father and son, are having strange dreams and fuzzy memories. For Josh, the decade since the hypnosis he's struggled with daily tasks and has become a shell of his former self. Things are so bad that he and Renai have separated and Joshua has become distant from his three kids, including Dalton who is now getting ready to leave for college. Since Joshua and Dalton rarely talk, Joshua volunteers to drive Dalton to his new college. This only serves to further the rift between father and son. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media