The best thing about the Insidious franchise was its stamina to hold a good grip on the audience throughout its four films. None of them were scary AF, but all of them had enough material to keep you hooked. However, the latest installment, “The Red Door,” directed by Patrick Wilson, reveals the franchise’s shortcomings. You can clearly see James Wan and Leigh Whannell ka aashirvaad missing here as the film follows a formulaic approach, relying on clichéd scares and lacking genuine terror. Safe to say it is the worst movie of this series.
Plot
So, here’s the deal: the Lambert family, who you might vaguely remember from the first two films, undergoes hypnosis to forget all the trauma they went through (iska form kaha milta hai? asking for a friend). Flash forward nine years, and we find Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) divorced from his wife Renai (Rose Byrne). Itna hi nahi, grandma Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) has also passed away, jinke funeral mein Josh decides to take his chidhu teenage son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) to college. But things get spooky when best wishes dene, the past comes back to haunt the family. Are they up for one last challenge, to finally close the red door, once and for all?
Performances
Jab performances hi convincing na lage, toh ek achhi plot bhi kya ukhaad legi? And this one doesn’t even have a captivating screenplay to fall back to. Patrick Wilson does his best to repair shit, reprising his role as protective dad Josh Lambert. He’s probably the only one who still cares about this franchise lmao. Ty Simpkins delivers a ‘hmm issokay’ performance as Dalton, displaying only two moods throughout the movie- shit scared or idgaf. The kid him was so much better smh. The rest of the cast, including Sinclair Daniel and Rose Byrne, unfortunately, falls flat with forgettable performances.
Half hearted performances + a weak script = a sea of mediocrity.
Screenplay
The best thing about this movie is if you wear earphones to cut the noise, then neend bohot achhi aayegi. Scott Teems, the mastermind behind the fck ups of “Firestarter” and “Halloween Kills,” returns with a snooze-fest of a script. It’s the same old ghisey-pitey horror tropes jo hum Aahat mein already dekh chuke hai. So damn frustrating. On top of that, character development ke naam pe bass ‘now they are alive, and now they are dead’ hai. The college setting does not spook you out at all. More of a hindrance than a backdrop, the setting separates the characters and results in a disjointed mess. There is no scare factor minus the random jumpscares, and you start doubting if it really is a horror movie smh.
Writing
Writing ka bhi same haal hai. Idk what has suddenly happened with everyone considering the audience to be so damn dumb. There are moments of unintentional komedi, like when they color-grade the entire frame to bright red to indicate danger. It’s like they’re saying, “Jaldi wahaan se hato! Something scary is about to happen!” You can’t get through this movie without facepalming at least twice. In his directorial debut, Patrick Wilson fails to bring anything fresh or innovative to the table. He is such a good actor in the horror genre, really was expecting something out of the box for fun. But it’s as if he watched them make the movies for so long that he thought he could do it himself, but didn’t bother to inject any personal style.
“Insidious: The Red Door” attempts to provide a satisfying conclusion for the Lambert family, but falls short on multiple levels. Har aspect se it seems like a half-hearted attempt at making another film for the franchise. It’s like the school you forecfully doing your homework. It’s a missed opportunity to inject new life into the franchise and ends up feeling like a lackluster farewell. Maybe it’s time for the Insidious series to disappear into The Further for good.
