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At least Patrick Wilson still cares about “ Insidious.” A staple of the James Wan-iverse (he also stars in the “Conjuring” series), Wilson makes his directorial debut with “Insidious: The Red Door.” He also stars in the movie, reprising his role as protective dad Josh Lambert from “ Insidious ” and “Insidious: Chapter Two.” In classic “why the hell not?” deep-franchise style, he also performs a hard-rock number with the Swedish band Ghost over the end credits. (Did you know Patrick Wilson could sing? Neither did I.) 

“The Red Door” is the fifth, and supposedly final, “Insidious” movie. And, with the caveat that you can never trust a horror franchise to end when it says it will end, it does deliver a reasonably satisfying wrap-up to the story of the Lambert family. They’ve been absent from “Insidious” since 2013, when Blumhouse pivoted to focus on Lin Shaye ’s motherly psychic character Elise Rainier in a string of prequels. (Although she died in the second one, she appears here, because again—why not?) And much has happened while the series was away. 

Young Dalton Lambert ( Ty Simpkins ) has grown from a possessed little boy into a brooding 19-year-old art student beginning his first semester of college. His parents, Josh (Wilson) and Renai ( Rose Byrne ), have separated. And his grandmother Lorraine, who played a role in saving Dalton from the evil spirits of The Further, has died. Dalton doesn’t remember his trip into The Further, nor does Josh; the film opens with a scene of the two of them being instructed to forget an entire year of their lives by a hypnotist. 

This is accomplished remarkably quickly—if “The Red Door” was an anti-drug PSA, its tagline would be, “Hypnosis: Not even once.” Counting backward from 10 is all it takes to wipe huge chunks of the Lamberts’ minds clean, and those memories resurface just as easily when Dalton is asked to perform a meditation exercise in his painting class. “The Red Door” plays a little with the trope of artists creating possessed or otherwise supernatural works as seen in horror movies like “The Devil’s Candy.” But most of its runtime is spent exploring something less inspired. 

Here, Josh and Dalton’s gift for astral projection isn’t just a mysterious phenomenon. It’s that old saw of inherited trauma and mental illness that’s been wreaking havoc on horror movies since “ Hereditary .” This manifests in the form of revelations about the father Josh never knew, which overlap with Josh’s guilt and Dalton’s resentment about the divorce. It’s not the most labored use of the metaphor in recent years—that would be another of co-screenwriter Scott Teems ’ credits, the nonsensical “ Halloween Kills .” But it’s such a rote theme at this point that it sucks all of the interest from the family drama.

Callbacks to other “Insidious” films are half-hearted, and “The Red Door” seems to give up on trying to make all of the pieces fit after a while. What does work are a handful of scares in the film’s first half. As a director, Wilson proves himself familiar enough with the mechanics of a jump scare—clearly, he picked up a few things from working with Wan all those years—to give audiences what they want. An early scene where Josh hallucinates a ghastly old woman while trapped inside an MRI machine is especially well done and ties in with a subplot where Josh seeks treatment for persistent fatigue and brain fog. (Long COVID? Nope, The Further!)

However, once the college-centric main plot kicks in, the movie slowly declines toward an underwhelming finale. Visually, Wilson faithfully re-creates the misty look of the previous films. Tiny Tim ’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” warbles in a room full of broken dolls somewhere in the negative space of The Further. This is all fine—as are the jokes, the supporting characters, and the concessions to the film’s PG-13 rating by replacing explicit gore with fake vomit and pancake makeup. Wilson is pretty good as Josh, but that’s to be expected. He’s the one that’s still invested in the whole thing. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Katie Rife is a freelance writer and critic based in Chicago with a speciality in genre cinema. She worked as the News Editor of  The A.V. Club  from 2014-2019, and as Senior Editor of that site from 2019-2022. She currently writes about film for outlets like  Vulture, Rolling Stone, Indiewire, Polygon , and  RogerEbert.com.

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Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

Rated PG-13 for violence, terror, frightening images, strong language and suggestive references.

107 minutes

Ty Simpkins as Dalton Lambert

Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert

Rose Byrne as Renai Lambert

Lin Shaye as Elise

Andrew Astor as Foster Lambert

Hiam Abbass

Sinclair Daniel

Peter Dager

Leigh Whannell as Specs

Angus Sampson as Tucker

• Patrick Wilson

Writer (based on characters created by)

• Leigh Whannell

Writer (story by)

• Scott Teems

Cinematographer

• Autumn Eakin
• Joseph Bishara

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‘Insidious: The Red Door’ Review: The Ghost of Jump Scares Past

Patrick Wilson makes his directorial debut with this fifth installment of the horror franchise haunted by a red-faced demon.

By Jason Zinoman

“Insidious,” whose fifth installment opened Friday, is a second-tier horror franchise — it’s not even the best James Wan franchise starring Patrick Wilson, which would be “The Conjuring” — with a few elite jump scares, including one of the best in the genre. In the original in 2010, Lorraine Lambert (Barbara Hershey) is telling her son, Josh (Wilson), about a horrible dream when a red-faced demon suddenly appears behind his head. It’s a magnificent shock because of the askew blocking, the patient misdirection of the editing and Hershey’s committed performance.

In “Insidious: The Red Door,” a grim, workmanlike effort that collapses into woo-woo nonsense, Wilson makes his directorial debut, and demonstrates he grasps the importance of that jump scare, which is sketched in charcoal on paper next to his name in the opening credits. But that reference is also a reminder of what’s missing.

The movie begins nine years after the second “Insidious” at the funeral of Lorraine, and its first scare, a nicely oblique if relatively simple one, once again takes place above her son’s head. Josh’s memory has been scrubbed in the previous film but nags at him, and Wilson doesn’t move the camera from his own face inside a car as he goes through an array of emotions while texting his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins). This prickly relationship is at the center of the movie, as dad drives his son to college. They share the family curse, a habit of being visited by evil figures from another realm called the Further (think the Upside Down from “Stranger Things” ).

As has become cliché, trauma takes center stage, with characters mouthing lines like, “We need to remember even the things that hurt” — which is at least better than pretentious small talk like “Death floods the mind with memory.”

The leaden screenplay would be easier to overlook if there were more spooky sequences. Wilson stages one nicely claustrophobic scene inside an M.R.I. machine, but his peekaboo shocks can be a little telegraphed. And while his placid, android handsomeness can hint at the uncanny, making him a magnetic horror actor, there are fewer standout performances than in previous installments of the series, which has been notable for turns by Rose Byrne and Lin Shaye (both of whom show up again, too briefly). “The Red Door” loses energy when it focuses on Simpkins’s Dalton, a blandly brooding artist type who cries while painting, and the grim doings in the Further, whose aesthetic evokes a homemade haunted house in the family garage.

“Insidious” is essentially a ghost story, so ending it presents a typical challenge. Unlike with vampires and serial killers, it’s not clear how the apparition threatens to end the chase. The abrupt resolution of this chapter is a letdown, but not as much of one as the return of the red-faced demon, who pops up, unobscured, center frame. The result is not a jump scare so much as a bunny hop.

Insidious: The Red Door Rated PG-13 for explicit violins and implicit violence. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters.

Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for The Times. As the paper’s first comedy critic, he has written the On Comedy column since 2011. More about Jason Zinoman

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Insidious: The Red Door Reviews

It still feels like a satisfying conclusion to a series of films that have continuously terrified us for over a decade. That alone is worth remembering.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 6, 2024

Similar to Wan’s The Conjuring universe, Insidious has long overstayed its welcome, reaching the point where its spark has quelled and there’s nothing interesting buried within these characters anymore. We have reached the end of the Further.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 17, 2023

The set-up was great, but the Insidious series has lost a lot of its luster.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 11, 2023

Lamentably, this unusual study of family trauma and memory loss gradually loses its shine and capacity to scare. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 5, 2023

The fact The Red Door works best as a family drama rather than a terrifying scare-fest -- to the extent that when the finale takes another trip into the Further is almost feels tacked on -- tells you it’s time to close the door on the franchise.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2023

This latest anemic attempt at a creepy film is tripped up by a fragmented story and lackluster efforts to pass off things that jump out of the dark to an amped up musical track as being scary.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Aug 9, 2023

Earlier franchise chapters featured a few smirkworthy scares and some stylish filmmaking flourishes, but The Red Door is merely an inert, boring drag.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2023

Wilson shows he can conjure (tee hee) some worthwhile bumps in the night as a filmmaker, and it will be interesting to see what he tackles next.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 4, 2023

Wilson makes his directorial debut with this film that is nice enough in an anaemic way.

Full Review | Aug 3, 2023

Insidious: The Red Door doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessors. It tantalizes us with a few effective scares, but its pacing and character development fall short.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 2, 2023

Patrick Wilson lands some cool shots and Hiam Abass is a welcome reprieve to predictable storylines and tropes. There is a tangible gap in what might have been achieved if the red door opened through expectations.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 1, 2023

Akin to Child's Play 3, Insidious: The Red Door sees grown-up protagonists facing old fears. Despite some flat moments, it's an interesting final chapter.

Patrick Wilson shows some promise for directing and delivers some genuinely well-crafted scares. Unfortunately, the story that spends most of its runtime uncovering events the audience already knows just shows the franchise shouln't have gone further.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.75/5 | Jul 27, 2023

A disappointing entry that, sadly, spends more time recapping the previous films instead of carving its own path.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 24, 2023

Insidious: The Red Door plays it safe and takes it a bit too slow, but it's good performances and nostalgic scares make it worth the viewing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 24, 2023

This isn't a meaningful exploration of trauma's lingering impact, the current genre go-to, as much as it wants to be.

Full Review | Jul 22, 2023

The fifth Insidious movie starts strong, with fresh character touches and chilling, eerily quiet moments, but it eventually suffers from a sequel's usual diminishing returns.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

While not as good as some of the film in the Insidious franchise this does more than enough to suggest that Patrick Wilson has what it takes to be a decent genre director.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2023

I loved the father/son chemistry from Patrick Wilson & Ty Simpkins in this chapter in the Insidious franchise, though it could've been scarier overall.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2023

Takes the laziest of all routes, suggesting that what happened a decade ago shall happen again now in more or less exactly the same way.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 20, 2023

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Insidious: The Red Door

The Lamberts must go deeper into The Further than ever before to put their demons to rest once and for all. The Lamberts must go deeper into The Further than ever before to put their demons to rest once and for all. The Lamberts must go deeper into The Further than ever before to put their demons to rest once and for all.

• Patrick Wilson
• Leigh Whannell
• Scott Teems
• Ty Simpkins
• 448 User reviews
• 131 Critic reviews
• 45 Metascore
• 2 nominations

• Dalton Lambert

• Josh Lambert

• Renai Lambert

• Chris Winslow

• Professor Armagan

• Foster Lambert

• Kali Lambert

• Nick the Dick

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• Lipstick Demon

• Smash Face …

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• Trivia Patrick Wilson 's directorial debut.
• Goofs When Daltons dorm loses power, his fan is still running on the dresser.
• Crazy credits At the conclusion of the credits, we see a flickering light, illuminating the now blackened door.
• Connections Featured in Half in the Bag: 2023 Catch-up (Part 1) (2023)
• Soundtracks Roll with the Changes Written by Kevin Cronin Performed by REO Speedwagon Courtesy of Mojo Music & Media

User reviews 448

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• How long is Insidious: The Red Door? Powered by Alexa
• July 7, 2023 (United States)
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• Insidious 5
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• $16,000,000 (estimated)
• $82,156,962
• $33,013,036
• Jul 9, 2023
• $189,086,877

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• Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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‘insidious: the red door’ review: patrick wilson directs a desultory entry in the hit franchise.

Wilson helms and stars in this fifth installment, a sequel to 2013's 'Insidious: Chapter 2.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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Robert de niro, bobby cannavale butt heads while caring for autistic child in 'ezra' trailer, kieran culkin tells his wife he wants more kids while accepting best actor emmy: "you said maybe if i win", insidious: the red door.

But things are not okay for the emotionally adrift Josh, who’s mourning the loss of his marriage, and his teenage son Dalton (Ty Simpkins, reprising his role from the first two films), with whom he has a strained relationship. In an effort to patch things up, Josh — who along with Dalton has had his horrific memories of his past experiences repressed by a handy dose of hypnotherapy — offers to drive his son to college, where he’s beginning his freshman year.

It doesn’t go well, with the sullen teenager resistant to his father’s attempts at camaraderie, which include encouraging him to attend a frat party. Things improve marginally, for both Dalton and the film, with the arrival of Chris (Sinclair Daniel), a wittily lively young woman who’s been mistakenly assigned to be his roommate. She becomes Dalton’s friend and confidant, which is no easy task because he doesn’t exactly have a sparkling personality.

Scott Teems’ screenplay, based on a story by him and series co-creator Leigh Whannell (who returns for a cameo as the geeky Specs), attempts to infuse the spooky proceedings with drama revolving around Josh’s lingering guilt and revelations about the father he never knew, who’s now apparently haunting him. But none of it has much impact, despite Wilson’s best efforts to provide character-driven texture.

Series fans will enjoy the reappearances of many characters from the other films, including Lin Shaye ’s psychic (she died in a previous installment, but death is no impediment to cameos in films like this), although it’s unfortunate that the always-welcome Byrne is relegated to a minor role. Even Wilson receives less screen time than Simpkins, who is forced to carry the film despite the burden of his character being a real bummer. Fortunately, there’s Daniel, who provides some much-needed comic juice to the otherwise desultory goings-on, and Hiam Abbass ( Succession ), projecting her usual authority as Dalton’s art professor.

Patrick Wilson fans familiar with his terrific musical theater turns in such Broadway shows as The Full Monty and Oklahoma! will want to stick around for the end credits, featuring his vocals on a heavy metal song with the Swedish rock band Ghost.

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'Insidious: The Red Door' Review: What Patrick Wilson's Directorial Debut Lacks in Scares It Makes up for in Character

Also starring Ty Simpkins and Rose Byrne, this new chapter in the horror franchise is the one that feels most human.

It might sound weird to read a review where the critic talks about how the first Insidious film was one of the first true horror movies they ever sat down and watched, yet that's exactly how this review is going to start.

The Insidious franchise has always felt like the perfect gateway for burgeoning horror fans. Even with their PG-13 ratings, the first two films, and even the third film, can get pretty damn scary with their clever uses of tension, jump scares, and worldbuilding. The first two installments delivered some solid scares while also telling a surprisingly compelling story about a family being haunted by demonic forces. The third film decided to go the prequel route and even found some success in doing so by putting the spotlight on Lin Shaye 's Elise Rainer. However, much of the franchise's reputation was hindered by a near-disastrous fourth entry with The Last Key .

Insidious: The Red Door opts to move the story of the first two films forward, with franchise vets Patrick Wilson , Rose Byrne , and Ty Simpkins all reprising their roles, plus Wilson taking over the directorial reins in his feature directorial debut. The film opens nine years after the events of Insidious: Chapter 2 with Josh and Dalton Lambert (Wilson & Simpkins) having no memory of the horrific events that transpired nearly a decade ago. Josh has since divorced Renai (Byrne) and has a tumultuous relationship with Dalton who's getting ready to go off to college. Following a death in the family, Renai suggests that Josh drop Dalton off at school to which the father and son reluctantly agree. After a heated argument, both Josh and Dalton's memories of their haunted pasts begin to terrorize them, causing each to seek out the truth.

RELATED: Why Patrick Wilson Made His Directorial Debut with 'Insidious' Rather Than 'The Conjuring'

'Insidious: The Red Door' Feels Different From Previous Installments

One aspect that jumps out immediately about Insidious: The Red Doo r is just how different a director Patrick Wilson is compared to Wan, Leigh Whannell , and Adam Robitel . The aesthetic feels different, and even the mood does as well. The first two installments had a lingering sense of dread looming over them and, while you do feel that at times with The Red Door , the film also manages to use some of its runtime to delve into family drama as well as Dalton bonding with his new college friend Chris ( Sinclair Daniel ). Some of it works, and fans will likely find themselves rooting for Renai and Josh to get back together and put their tragic past behind them, while some of it just felt unnecessary and tacked on, including Dalton and Chris going to war with the douchey frat guy Nick ( Peter Dager ). That's not to say that a film like this can't have some moments of levity and laughter, but some moments feel like they're ripped out of a mid-2000s college comedy rather than a horror movie. As a result, they just feel jarring.

That being said, Wilson does show quite a bit of promise as a filmmaker from the way he can deliver some effective scares while also creating moments that will be sure to have audience members clenching their armrests. Even with the unnecessary subplots that are thrown in, The Red Door flows at a pretty brisk pace, with the film almost working better as an epilogue rather than some world-shattering finale that will forever change the way you look at the franchise.

The screenplay itself, written by rising genre scribe Scott Teems , at times doesn't know how to truly balance all the story elements together. There are attempts at creating fan service moments that allude to previous installments, but it also never seems fully interested in exploring the world of The Further in a new light. It's Wilson's direction that ultimately helps the film stand out a bit more, proving that he has a firm grasp on what works about the franchise while also telling a story that feels personal.

'Insidious: The Red Door' Isn't Too Scary and That's OK

Insidious: The Red Door also dials it a bit back on the jump scares. While there are still a handful of moments that will shake the auditorium, there's nothing as notable as that infamous Lipstick-Face Demon scare in the 2011 film. However, the new installment manages to find other ways to get under the audience's skin, including one sequence that occurs within the first ten minutes involving Josh sitting in his car, texting Dalton, unaware of what's going on behind him. The audience won't feel as uncomfortable as they might have with previous entries, but fans of the films will be able to still be able to find a way to care because they've become attached to these characters. Even with a supposed grand finale that ends with more of a whimper than a bang, The Red Door still oddly feels like a satisfying conclusion to this story, and a lot of that might be because of the Lambert family.

Simpkins and Wilson take on the leading roles this time around with the latter turning another solid turn as the now divorced Josh. Simpkins is decent enough as well, but his character never really feels like a captivating protagonist. Instead, he's just kind of there. Byrne has very little to do compared to what she's been given in the past, only showing up in the first and third acts, but is still a more than welcome presence on screen. Hiam Abbass feels wasted in her role as Dalton's strict art professor, ultimately feeling like a side note once the credits start to roll.

Insidious: The Red Door might not be the scariest installment in the franchise, but it feels a lot more human than the others before it. The character moments end up feeling more effective than some of the film's big set-pieces and, while that may bug some genre purists, those who have stuck around since the first film released over 10 years ago will be pleased.

Insidious: The Red Door is now playing in theaters.

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Insidious: The Red Door review – shoddy horror sequel

Patrick Wilson makes his directorial debut with a labored legacy sequel that should hopefully close the door on the long-running franchise

N ow in its fifth installment across more than a decade with The Red Door, the Insidious franchise boasts an impressive longevity, albeit in a way more damning than damned. The big horror series prolong their popularity on the strength of a monster (Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers and the rest of the Halloween costume perennials) or a narrative device (the self-inflicted torture of Saw, the Rube Goldberg inevitability of fate in Final Destination), but the Insidious pictures have yielded four windfalls over $100m despite a lack of any distinctive features. The unifying premise for hit factory Blumhouse’s reliable yet reliably uninteresting moneymaker dares viewers to wonder “what if there was a creepy thing that jumped out at you, then disappeared?” The closest it gets to a recurring mascot is a Darth Maul-looking phantom alternately referred to by fans as The Man With Fire in His Face, Lipstick-Face Demon, The Red-Faced Demon, or Sixtass, and in any case, he’s pretty light on charisma.

The first few chapters benefited hugely from the steady directorial hands of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, genre guys with strong fundamentals who knew how to use the camera to coax every iota of tension from material unremarkable on paper. This time around, the star Patrick Wilson takes the reins and reveals just how little has held the property together up to this point. Without innovative blocking and framing, each scene follows a rote repetition as clichés of studio-horror storytelling cue up the oldest scares in the book. Some lumpy mumbling about repression and cycles of generational trauma, a figure appears out of focus in the background, a moment of silence to foster a false sense of security, and then the cinematic equivalent of grabbing someone’s shoulders and screaming “BOO!” in their ear. If these cheap tricks garner a reaction at all, it’s to their suddenness and loudness, a knee-jerk agitation nowhere near as affecting as true, unleaded terror.

To his credit and ultimate detriment, the actor-turned-cineaste Wilson set out to make something more pointed from a setup that hasn’t been about much of anything in the past, only to get bogged down in wormy metaphor. Shortly after the conclusion of the second film – the convoluted chronology of sequels and prequels doesn’t gum up the works too badly, at least – the Lambert family has agreed to submit to therapeutic hypnosis so that they might forget the harrowing events they’ve just survived. Ten years later, and Josh (Wilson) has split from Renai (a scant Rose Byrne), while their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) has grown into a sullen, resentful teenager rolling his eyes through visits with Dad. As a last-ditch attempt to bond, Josh takes it upon himself to drive Dalton to campus for college move-in weekend, and the past decade of dormant dysfunction starts to rear its ugly, Darth Maul head.

The customary gobbledygook about astral projection now buttresses stale subtext concerning the danger of pushing down painful memories, and the struggle to disrupt patterns of inherited injury. This facile psychologizing ties together the most done-to-death notions in contemporary horror, and they’re only worsened by their articulation in half-baked metaphysics and dumbed-down symbolism. When Wilson wants to telegraph that peril is imminent, for example, he color-grades the entire frame to a bright, sanguine red. In his defense, he’s working with the shoddiest script in the Insidious canon, courtesy of the Firestarter and Halloween Kills scribe Scott Teems. The college setting quickly becomes counterintuitive, separating Dalton and Josh in their own threads of plot that leave the action halting and disjointed. (The concept also saddles Dalton with a sidekick who speaks in faux-clever dialogue so irritating that her ongoing survival comes to feel like a missed opportunity.) The writing expends more effort on teasing out the logistics of seeing dead people than making the phenomenon frightening or emotionally resonant. The shambling corpses may as well be bags of meat rather than reanimated people.

Wilson incorporates minor brushstrokes that evince a respect for genre history from a guy who claims Poltergeist as one of his favorite movies, from the ominous font choices to the received Polanski-isms. But even as a lifelong student of the arts with a clear affection for his work, he brings no hint of an individual sensibility to his reintroduction as film-maker, the exception being an over-fondness for pushy facial closeups that’s long been the dead giveaway of an actor taking to the other side of the camera. As he attempts to massage a message into a flimsy container, he shows that he has little to say for himself. A first film from someone with a lifetime of experience on sets and stages should be packed with ideas itching to free themselves; Wilson comes at this like the star of a TV show who’s watched them make it for long enough that he figures he could do it himself.

Insidious: The Red Door is now out in US and UK cinemas

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Review: ‘Insidious: The Red Door’ is sometimes unnerving, but even evil has an expiration date

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Director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell have had a massive impact on modern horror movies, not once, but twice: first with 2004’s “ Saw ,” which set off a wave of torture-heavy splatter films; and then with the atmospheric 2010 film “ Insidious ,” a crafty tale of paranormal intrusion. Over the last decade, “Insidious” has proved especially influential, inspiring dozens of movies about haunted objects, creepy kids and grizzled paranormal investigators — all of them filled with slow-mounting tension and assaultive jump-scares, many of them spawning entire universes of sequels, prequels and spinoffs.

“Insidious: The Red Door” is the fifth film in its series, and it seems at times like a conscious effort to remind everyone who’s the genre’s big boss. Wan isn’t involved this time, but Whannell co-wrote the story with the movie’s credited screenwriter Scott Teems, while Patrick Wilson — the star of the original “Insidious” and the costar of this one — makes his directorial debut. This team has produced something that maybe relies too much on the same old tricks, but which is often genuinely terrifying.

Wilson once again plays Josh Lambert, who in the first two films discovered that he and his son Dalton ( Ty Simpkins ) have the ability to leave their bodies via astral projection, thanks to their connection to a purgatorial dimension dubbed the Further, filled with unsettled ghosts and vicious demons who intend to use the Lamberts to help them drain the vitality from living humans. The third and fourth “Insidious” films were prequels that only mentioned the Lamberts in passing; but “The Red Door” follows directly from “ Insidious: Chapter Two ,” which ended with Josh and Dalton being hypnotized to suppress all their memories of the Further.

That cure has turned out to be a curse. Nine years later, severed from an essential part of themselves and their shared pasts, Josh and Dalton have become estranged from each other; and Josh is also now divorced from Dalton’s mother, Renai ( Rose Byrne ). But when Dalton leaves home to study painting at college, his favorite professor ( Hiam Abbass ) encourages him to tap into his subconscious, which begins to unlock his powers. At the same time, Josh starts digging into his own past to figure out why he’s such a jerk to the people he loves. The answers shock him — and awaken him, too.

Anyone who’s seen an “Insidious” movie before (or any of the “Insidious” knockoffs) knows what comes next. Both Josh and Dalton have their daily lives disrupted by visions of rotting corpses creeping toward them and making demands. From behind the camera, Wilson handles the visual grammar of all this well, though there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. He’s following a well-established blueprint. Wan (and later Whannell, when he directed the third film) perfected the art of weaponizing negative space on the screen, keeping the audience constantly on edge by threatening to fill the blurry areas around the heroes’ heads with something monstrous.

That trick still works like gangbusters, and “The Red Door” features several sequences that are “watch through your fingers while slumped down in your seat”-level scary. (A scene where Josh is playing a game of Concentration with pictures taped to his living room window while an evil spirit slowly approaches undetected is almost unbearably intense.) Having two main characters suffering from hauntings separately works against this movie’s narrative momentum, but it does allow Wilson and Teems to bounce from scare to scare, without much setup — or respite.

“The Red Door” isn’t as good as the first “Insidious,” and may actually fall short of several of the “Insidious” clones. But it’s no impersonal bit of brand extension. There’s a strong idea here about how important it is for an artist — any fully alive human being, really — to confront past traumas instead of blocking them out. Granted, the Lambert boys have to face their fears or there’ll be no horror movie. But the point is still well-taken.

“Insidious: The Red Door”

Rated: PG-13, for violence, terror, frightening images, strong language and suggestive references.

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Playing: In general release

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Insidious: the red door, common sense media reviewers.

Fifth in ghost franchise underwhelms; violence, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The lesson seems to be that "forgetting doesn't wo

Characters are good and likable, but they're also

The five members of the Lambert family are White,

Jump scares. Moments of peril and panic. Possessed

Brief fake kissing, meant as a distraction. Sex-re

A use of "f--k," plus a few uses of "s--t," "t-tti

Drinking at a frat party. Ghost of someone said to

Parents need to know that Insidious: The Red Door -- the fifth movie in the Insidious horror franchise -- is the direct sequel to Insidious: Chapter 2 , exploring the hypnotism and memory suppression conducted on Josh (Patrick Wilson) and his now teen son Dalton (Ty Simpkins). Violence…

Positive Messages

The lesson seems to be that "forgetting doesn't work; we need to remember, even the things that hurt." Admitting and accepting their pain eventually leads characters to what could be a reconciliation for the family.

Positive Role Models

Characters are good and likable, but they're also largely troubled people who are struggling to get by and are victimized by evil forces.

Diverse Representations

The five members of the Lambert family are White, and the focus is on two men. At Dalton's school, his best friend, Chris (Sinclair Daniel), is Black, and his instructor, Professor Armagan, is played by Palestinian actor Hiam Abbass. Both women are strong and have agency. Black actor E. Roger Mitchell appears as a doctor; many other people of color appear in small roles or in background. Closing credits claim that the movie was made by a diverse cast and crew. A sequence at a frat party includes a White male student giving a speech that borders on hate; it's not received well.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Jump scares. Moments of peril and panic. Possessed characters stalk and threaten other characters. Woman is choked by ghost, passes out, revived by CPR. Woman thrown against wall. Woman thrown to ground. Ghost jumps through window, chases character through house. Ghost shoves character into a closet, knocks down clothes rod. Characters grabbed by arms, throats. Creepy figures lurk in background. Demonic figures. Blood (handprints, smears, etc.) and/or oozing liquids. Ghost vomits on character's face. A character from the previous movies dies, and others attend the funeral, where death is discussed. Reference to a character dying by suicide. Creepy drawings and artwork.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief fake kissing, meant as a distraction. Sex-related dialogue/innuendo ("slap your salami," "crusty sheets," "we were gonna do it," "I left my brassiere in Nick's room," etc.). A character grabs and drops a box of condoms. Possible nude drawing hangs on wall of art class, seen briefly.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A use of "f--k," plus a few uses of "s--t," "t-tties," "goddamn," "ass," "bitch," "hell," "d--k," "damn," "peckerwood," "freakin'," "butt," "crapper." Exclamatory use of "oh God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drinking at a frat party. Ghost of someone said to have died at a previous party is seen vomiting in toilet.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Insidious: The Red Door -- the fifth movie in the Insidious horror franchise -- is the direct sequel to Insidious: Chapter 2 , exploring the hypnotism and memory suppression conducted on Josh ( Patrick Wilson ) and his now teen son Dalton (Ty Simpkins). Violence includes jump scares, ghost attacks, moments of peril and panic, stalking, threatening, a woman being choked by a ghost, women thrown to the floor or against a wall, arms and throats grabbed, creepy figures, blood, vomit, other oozing liquids, and more. There are also a few instances of sex-related dialogue or innuendo, and a character is shown grabbing a box of condoms. Language includes a use of "f--k," plus a few uses of "s--t," "t-tties," "goddamn," "ass," "bitch," "hell," "d--k," and other words. Teens drink at a frat party, and the ghost of a teen who drank too much vomits into a toilet. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (5)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Such a great addition to the franchise.

Great horror movie, what's the story.

In INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR, it's been nine years since the events of Insidious: Chapter 2 , in which young Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and his father, Josh ( Patrick Wilson ), had hypnosis to suppress the memories of their horrific experiences. Dalton has become a sullen teen who's about to head off to art school. And Josh has felt "foggy" ever since the hypnotism, his marriage to Renai ( Rose Byrne ) falling apart and his relationship with Dalton deteriorating. In school, Dalton's art professor ( Hiam Abbass ) encourages him to dig deep for inspiration, and some of the old terrifying entities begin to make themselves known again. With the help of his new college friend Chris (Sinclair Daniel), Dalton discovers that he can "astral project" and starts looking for answers. But, unfortunately, he goes a bit too far, and both father and son wind up inside The Further once more.

Is It Any Good?

The fifth Insidious movie starts strong, with fresh character touches and chilling, eerily quiet moments, but it eventually suffers from a sequel's usual diminishing returns. Making his debut as director, star Wilson brings Insidious: The Red Door back to the Lambert family, whom we last saw in Insidious: Chapter 2 . ( Insidious: Chapter 3 and Insidious: The Last Key were both prequels.) As an actor, Wilson seems interested in the movie's characters and their relationships, which are strained both by their horrific pasts and their suppressed memories. He also has a few nifty ideas for creeping scares, such as one in which he sits in the cab of his truck, or when he plays a "memory game" in his living room, or -- most nail-bitingly -- gets stuck inside an MRI machine. And the addition of Dalton's friend Chris is a delightful burst of silly energy.

But as Dalton and Josh spend more time apart and the plot gets rolling, it starts to feel overly familiar -- and more than a little tired. Even The Further seems far less terrifying than it once did. Wilson's directing career could be promising, but Insidious: The Red Door is a sign that maybe this franchise should close up.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Insidious: The Red Door 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How scary is the movie? What's the appeal of horror movies ?

Do you agree with Dalton when he says that "forgetting doesn't work; we need to remember, even the things that hurt." Why, or why not?

What's the nature of the father-son relationship in this movie? How does it compare to your real-life relationships?

How does this film compare to the four previous movies in the Insidious series?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 7, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : August 1, 2023
• Cast : Ty Simpkins , Patrick Wilson , Sinclair Daniel
• Director : Patrick Wilson
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studios : Screen Gems , Stage 6 Films
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence, terror, frightening images, strong language and suggestive references
• Last updated : December 6, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Insidious: The Red Door review: a serviceable scare fest

“Insidious: The Red Door is an occasionally scary but frustratingly inert slice of horror entertainment.”

• Patrick Wilson's capable direction
• Several standout horror set pieces
• A cast of one-note characters
• A disjointed, overly cyclical structure
• A toothless third act

Insidious: The Red Door won’t knock your socks off, but it will make you jump in your seat a few times. The fifth installment in the Insidious franchise and a direct sequel to 2013’s Insidious: Chapter 2 , the new film benefits from its own heightened level of accessibility. As clunky as it may be, the film’s opening scene ensures that its viewers don’t need to be too familiar with its franchise’s previous installments in order to follow along with its story. In an age when it feels like nearly every blockbuster movie comes with its own set of homework assignments, that’s an unexpected blessing.

As refreshingly direct as it is with its intentions, though, Insidious: The Red Door suffers greatly from a lackluster script by Scott Teems, which struggles to bring any dimensionality to the film’s story and characters. Visually, the direction from franchise lead Patrick Wilson, who makes his directorial debut here, is pedestrian but capable. The actor-director demonstrates a fundamental understanding of how to use basic tools like blocking and focus to devastatingly scary effect. His simple style, nonetheless, marks an inevitable step down for a franchise that was initially helmed by The Conjuring filmmaker James Wan.

Insidious: The Red Door begins where its 2013 predecessor left off, with father-son duo Josh (Wilson) and Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins) agreeing to have their traumatic memories of the spirit realm known as “The Further,” as well as the undead spirits that lurk within it, suppressed. When the film catches back up with Josh and Dalton (an older, broodier Simpkins) nine years later, it’s revealed that the blank spots in their memories have created an emotional rift between the two. However, when Dalton inadvertently paints a door to The Further, he makes both himself and his father vulnerable again to the demons of their past.

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Thanks to its leads’ geographical separation from each other, Insidious: The Red Door spends most of its first and second acts alternately terrorizing Josh and Dalton with horrifying visions and supernatural attacks. Some of these sequences are more effective than others, but not even The Red Door ’s scariest moments are able to distract from the fact that its structure is extremely one-note and repetitive. While the film’s exploration of Dalton’s lingering childhood trauma is occasionally compelling as well, his enforced distance from Wilson’s Josh prevents their relationship from ever deepening or growing in its complexity.

The flatness of The Red Door ’s story isn’t helped by its uninteresting supporting characters, which include Professor Armagan ( Succession ‘s Hiam Abbass), Dalton’s commanding but totally unexplored art teacher, and Chris Winslow (Sinclair Daniel), Dalton’s college roommate. Given how unbelievably she acts throughout The Red Door , the latter character might as well be a Manic Horror Dream Girl, while Rose Byrne understandably sleepwalks through the few underwritten minutes she gets to reprise her role as Renai, Josh’s former wife and confidant.

Its lifeless plot and characterizations aside, Insidious: The Red Door is, at times, as terrifying as any other mainstream horror film that’s been released this year. Many of its second-act set pieces are rendered inconsequential by the film’s cyclical structure, but that doesn’t mean some of them aren’t unnerving. A sequence involving Simpkins’ Dalton and the perpetually vomiting ghost of a dead college kid features the film’s best use of sound design, as well as a fun inverse on the monster-under-the-bed trope that feels, whether intentionally or not, reminiscent of the scariest scene from Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s far superior Pulse .

Another memorable sequence traps Wilson’s Josh in an MRI machine and utilizes his character’s limited visual perspective to significantly ramp up the tension before delivering Insidious: The Red Door ’s best and most bone-rattling jump scare. Together, these scenes establish Wilson’s technical capabilities as a director and even suggest that he may be able to produce a great horror film one day — so long as he’s given a better script than the one he was supposed to work with here. The Red Door makes it clear that Wilson knows how to visually construct a horror sequence, but his efforts are frequently hampered by the film’s disjointed, often illogical screenplay.

Like so many horror movies before it, Insidious: The Red Door becomes significantly less scary the more that it reveals about its plot and monsters. The film’s third act, which tries unsuccessfully to evoke the mood of an Argento-inspired Giallo horror movie, is dragged down significantly by an unearned sentimental streak and a profound lack of legitimately scary moments. All of these mistakes lead The Red Door toward a climax that not only falls short of the visceral terror it wants to achieve but also ends on an unsuitably saccharine note.

Overall, the film is best enjoyed as a lightweight addition to the same jump scare-centric brand of horror that some of Wilson’s previous collaborators — namely, James Wan — have perfected and popularized. It isn’t as effective as any of the films it tries to emulate, but it does have a handful of genuinely terrifying moments. Much like the painting that causes its characters so much trouble, Insidious: The Red Door is a disappointingly paper-thin construction, but one that does have the capacity to be striking, depending on which angle you look at it from.

Insidious: The Red Door is now playing in theaters.

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The alarm has been tripped. The backdoor is wide open. And who or whatever’s impersonating the security-system operator on the other end of the phone line has just croaked three words that no horror movie character would ever want to hear: “Look behind you.” The command puts Rose (Sosie Bacon), the increasingly petrified heroine of Smile, between a rock and a hard place. She has to look, even if every fiber of her being would rather not. And so does the audience. We’re locked into her campfire crucible, forced to follow the hesitant backward tilt of her gaze, and the anticipatory creep of a camera that’s slow to reveal what that disembodied voice has invited her (and us) to discover.

Smile is full of moments like this. It’s a nasty, diabolically calibrated multiplex scream machine — the kind of movie that sends ripples of nervous laughter through packed theaters, the kind that marionettes the whole crowd into a synchronized dance routine of frazzled nerves and spilled popcorn. Turn up your nose, if you must, at the lowly cheap sting of a jump scare. Smile gives that maligned device a workout for the ages. It rattles with aplomb.

Pearl is a candy-coated piece of rotten fruit. The film, which is director Ti West’s prequel to this year's X, trades in the desaturated look and 1970s seediness of its parent film for a lurid, Douglas Sirk-inspired aesthetic that seems, at first, to exist incongruently with its story of intense violence and horror. But much like its titular protagonist, whose youthful beauty and Southern lilt masks the monster within, there’s a poison lurking beneath Pearl’s vibrant colors and seemingly untarnished Depression-era America setting.

Set around 60 years before X, West’s new prequel does away with the por nstars, abandoned farms, and eerie old folks that made its predecessor’s horror influences clear and replaces them with poor farmers, charming film projectionists, and young women with big dreams. Despite those differences, Pearl still feels like a natural follow-up to X. The latter film, with its use of split screens and well-placed needle drops, offered a surprisingly dark rumination on the horror of old age. Pearl, meanwhile, explores the loss of innocence and, in specific, the often terrifying truths that remain after one’s dreams have been unceremoniously ripped away from them.

Horror movies, even the very good ones, have a way of turning their audiences into backseat survivors: “Get out of the house already!” we scream at characters too stubborn or stupid to acknowledge the warning signs around them. It can be part of the communal fun of the genre, pleading aloud for the people on screen to get in touch with their self-preservation instincts.

Viewers will likely have some choice words (or maybe just groans) for the slow-to-flee characters of Speak No Evil. Here, the imperiled — a Danish family enduring a nightmare weekend in the Dutch boonies — actually do make the decision to get the hell out of dodge. Alas, they only go a couple of miles down the road before putting the car in reverse, their escape aborted upon the discovery that a beloved toy has been left behind. What’s more exasperating than someone refusing to get out of the house? How about watching them get out of the house, change their mind, and step right back into it?

Insidious: The Red Door Review

07 Jul 2023

Insidious: The Red Door

After two prequels, the  Insidious  series returns to the family where it began, the Lamberts, because no good monster ever stays dead. Franchise star Patrick Wilson turns director here and does as good a job as you’d hope with the character beats of these tortured souls. But he never hits the heights of terror that the franchise is capable of – perhaps his closeness to the character preventing him from really twisting the knife.

As we rejoin the Lamberts, we’re reminded that son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and father Josh (Wilson) had their memories wiped nine years ago, so they would never again be tempted to astral-project into “The Further” and leave their bodies vulnerable to possession by dark forces. Now Dalton is an artist just starting at a college with worryingly dim lighting and unreliable power – uh oh.  When he follows a charismatic teacher's instructions to go deep into his subconscious, he discovers memories of a strange door that threaten to destabilise his mental health. Across the country, Josh is experiencing his own nightmares, and will have to delve into his own past to confront this new threat.

While there are a few effective gross-out moments and creeping scares, they’re largely unoriginal.

Wilson picked a franchise he knows well for his directorial debut, and he and Simpkins have a convincingly thorny but loving dynamic, as he does with Rose Byrne as his now-ex-wife Renai. He also finds comic beats to leaven the scares, particularly in some amusingly lame frat party scenes. There he has an ally in Dalton's college friend Chris (Sinclair Daniel), who is a breath of fresh air even if she implausibly sticks around through some outrageously creepy behaviour.

The problem is the choppy storytelling. You’ll need to remember the first two films for any real explanation of the threat here, or how to beat it. Going into the finale, there’s only a woolly sense of what needs to be done and what exactly is tormenting our heroes, which can’t help but puncture the menace. The pace is very much a slow burn, until a sudden rush to the finish, and while there are a few effective gross-out moments and creeping scares, they’re largely unoriginal. Wilson’s debut is no disaster, but he’ll need to sharpen his talons if he wants to make his mark on the horror pantheon behind the camera as well as in front.

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Insidious: The Red Door Review - A Potentially Satisfying Conclusion to a Horror Saga

The Insidious franchise is back and better than ever with the latest release, Insidious: The Red Door.

Insidious: The Red Door is the scariest movie of the summer. While that might not seem like much, considering there have not been as many high-profile horror films so far in summer 2023, it is still a scary good time at the movies for audiences looking for a break from action spectacle. The Insidious franchise is back and better than ever. It, alongside Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and No Hard Feelings , also shows that Sony Pictures is truly taking chances and risks on a wide variety of films for the summer movie season, and it is paying off for them.

The first Insidious was a surprise hit with critics and audiences when it premiered in 2011. The movie, along with the previously released Paranormal Activity franchise, redefined the modern haunting film and helped usher in a new era of supernatural atmospheric horror. It spawned a popular franchise that included one direct sequel and two prequel films. The fifth film in the series, Insidious: The Red Door , is essentially the real Insidious 3 ( Insidious: Chapter 3 itself was actually a prequel to the previous two films) as this film directly follows the events of the first two entries, taking place ten years after the events of Insidious Chapter 2 .

Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and Reani Lambert (Rose Byrne) have now separated, and their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) has now grown and is getting ready to go to college. Due to both Dalton and Josh having had their memories of the previous films wiped from their mind, a gap has been growing between them.

Yet as Dalton begins college, the events of the first two films he has repressed start to come to the surface and begin to haunt both him and his father. The two must return to the dark dimension known as The Further and put an end to an evil that has been haunting their family for longer than even they knew.

A Haunting Where the Drama Is Front and Center

Underneath all the paranormal elements and supernatural haunts, this is a relatable human story about the riff that forms between parent and child as one grows up. The supernatural elements are all seasoning for a story that is all too real for many, as a parent and child find themselves going through as time goes on. Josh and Dalton have grown apart due to the divorce and the multiple repressions fogging up Josh's mind to where he has become distant from everyone. The horror elements are rooted in tangible anxieties the audience can relate to.

It also adds the subtext of repressed trauma, forming a major riff between individuals. While the previous Insidious movies argued that it was best to put these terrible memories in the past and forget them, Insidious: The Red Door builds off that to acknowledge the toxic nature of the thought process.

In the ten years that have passed since the release of Insidious: Chapter 2 , a wider discussion about mental health has begun to take form. This long-awaited sequel justifies its existence by being in conversation with the original films. Instead of repressing terrible memories, it is better to acknowledge them and move forward.

Related: Insidious: Every Type of Demon in the Movies, Explained

Time has been the ultimate benefit of this movie. It also now arrives as the audience who likely saw the first two Insidious movies (which likely was rather young since they were rated PG-13) now are old enough to be close to Dalton's age in the film. While a completely different format, the movie has the same impact as Toy Story 3 or Monsters University in that it is a movie that used the gap in time to its advantage to not only make audiences nostalgic but also tap into the age of the audience who likely grew up with the original entries.

While the previous Insidious prequels might have diluted the brand a bit, the first two films by James Wan were a masterclass in horror. Made all the more impressive by their PG-13 rating, they managed to be terrifying without any of the normal hallmarks of a slasher or a gory torture porn venture. Honestly, if one hasn't gone back and rewatched the first two entries, it can be almost easy to forget just how good they are as terrifying movies but also really effective dramas. It left some pretty big shoes to fill, and luckily Patrick Wilson is more than up for the task .

Patrick Wilson Steps Up to Lead a Great Crew

Wilson himself has worked closely with Wan not just on the previous Insidious movies but also on The Conjuring franchise. He has also worked with some of the most creative filmmakers, from Joel Schumacher on The Phantom of the Opera , Zack Snyder on Watchmen , and Todd Field on Little Children . He has learned from the best and steps into the director's chair easily.

While the movie might overuse the jump scare trick one too many times, it is hard to argue how effective they are and that Wilson knows how to build tension. Even when it is clear what is about to happen, it doesn't make the final scare any less terrifying. Wilson has proven himself as exciting a director as he is an actor (and also a singer as he sings the song over the end credits proving he is a multitalented performer). It will be curious to see what he decides to follow this up with.

Wilson does a great job behind and in front of the camera, as do many of those involved. Ty Simpkins has truly grown up. For audiences who likely remember him as a kid from the first two Insidious movies or even in both Iron Man 3 and Jurassic World , seeing him as a young adult certainly will be shocking and a difficult adjustment.

In what is essentially his first full-time leading role, he easily sheds all expectations anyone might have held from his days as a kid actor. He carries a true sense of pain in his eyes that truly sells the sad, scared, and traumatized person at the center of this story.

Related: Why Insidious Is Scarier Than The Conjuring

The real star of the film is newcomer Sinclair Daniels, who plays Dalton's college roommate and eventually companion on this journey into a heart of darkness. From her first moment on screen, she commands the screen and easily steals the show. As chilling as the atmosphere in the film is and how terrifying it can be, the first thing likely on everyone's mind is who this person is and what else she can be seen in. Hopefully, Insidious: The Red Door is the beginning of a long and exciting career for her.

Insidious: The Red Door does have one major issue, and that is centered around the character of Reani Lambert, played by Rose Bryne . A vital part of the first two films, she is greatly sidelined in this movie. While she is not completely rewritten out of the film like Megan Fox in Transformers: Dark of the Moon or recast like Maria Bello replacing Rachel Weisz in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor , Bryne's lack of screen time is still frustrating.

She factors early on in the beginning and does not return until the end of the movie. While the intention is to clearly focus on the father-son dynamic, it does feel like the mother's role in the story is greatly short-changed, particularly when one considers how important she was in the first two. Her presence is brief, and that is rather frustrating.

A Worthy Conclusion to the Insidious Story

Insidious: The Red Door not only puts the franchise back on track, but it serves as an effective conclusion to the main Lambert trilogy of films while also tying nicely into the two prequel films to make a solid horror saga. It brings a story that started in 2011 to a satisfying conclusion. It might not be as scary as the original , but it gets pretty close.

As with any horror franchise, there will certainly be more (a spin-off film titled Thread: An Insidious Tale is already in development), but if the franchise wanted to end here, it would undoubtedly be a high note to go out on. Insidious: The Red Door will satisfy long-time fans of the franchise and should also scare any newcomers that have decided to join in for a scare.

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‘Insidious: The Red Door’ Review: This Stalled Horror Franchise Comes to a Creaky End

David ehrlich.

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One reason you should be able to jump in easily enough: the film starts with young Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and his dad Josh ( Patrick Wilson ) being hypnotized to forget everything that happened in “Insidious” and “Insidious: Chapter 2,” which effectively puts them on the same page as most of the people in the audience. For another thing, Scott Teems’ script — somehow even thinner than the line separating our world from the monster-filled hellscape that Dalton and Josh access through astral projection, or that it uses to access them — thoroughly flattens the series’ not-so-complicated backstory about “the Further” and Josh’s own childhood. It becomes a flimsy pretense to mass produce the genre’s most overfamiliar tropes about inherited trauma on an assembly line of ultra-telegraphed jump-scares. 

So while it’s pure speculation to suggest that Wilson saw the character-driven conflict behind “The Red Door” as a chance to combine his training with his tastes, it’s like I always say: You can take the boy out of Carnegie Mellon’s Drama program, but you can’t take Carnegie Mellon’s Drama program out of the boy. Indeed, the first act of Wilson’s directorial debut feels more like a hard-nosed grief drama — or at least an Ari Aster movie — than it does the fifth installment of a horror franchise about red-faced demons playing peek-a-boo with Rose Byrne. 

Simpkins plays Dalton as a non-character so vacant it’s hard to tell if he’s haunted or lobotomized, but there’s real pathos behind Josh’s failure to communicate with his son, and the patience Wilson displays with these scenes reflects a deeper interest in what’s really terrifying these people. Sinclair Daniel brings so much pep to her part as Dalton’s roommate that a comedy seems liable to break out any minute, and if not for the mud-brown cinematography that makes every scene look somewhat diseased (for some reason a staple of low-budget studio horror these days), you might almost forget that you’re watching a Blumhouse joint. 

The swirling violins and sudden bangs don’t start until Dalton attends a dopey art class taught by Hiam Abbass, who encourages her students to draw from their subconscious. From that point on, neither of the Lambert men can make it five minutes without astral projecting, as the shared experience brings them closer together even as those pesky demons threaten to tear them apart forever. From the moment Josh is in danger, “The Red Door” is overwhelmed by the feeling that it’s Wilson who’s just trying to get out of this thing alive.

That puts a lot of pressure — way too much — on the horror those phantoms might be able to produce, and though Wilson clearly paid attention to what his directors were doing on the previous “Insidious” movies, the rookie helmer lacks the chops to save this installment with jolts alone. Louder than it is scary, “The Red Door” fumbles its way from one predictable jump to the next, with the setpieces ranging from moderately clever (the MRI sequence plays) to enervatingly flat (a home invasion sequence that apes “It Follows” to negligible effect). By the time Wilson reaches the home stretch he’s running so low on fresh ideas that the movie’s climax offers all the thrill of watching people run around the haunted house at a local carnival. 

The generically (and decidedly PG-13) rent–a-scare horror elements interfere with what “The Red Door” really wants to do, which is to help Josh put an end to the pain cycle that he’s at risk of passing down to his kid. Spread thin between that father-son drama and the jolts intended to galvanize it, Wilson’s creaky debut underdelivers on both. Art is the door to the mind, Dalton’s teacher insists, but this one never opens wide enough to let anything memorable in — or out. 

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Movie Review — “Insidious: The Red Door”

Patrick Wilson has become something of the poster boy for “When Good Actors Do Horror.”

One thing you can be sure of, when Wilson does an “Annabelle,” “Insidious” or “Conjuring” movie, when something that can’t be happening starts happening, he’s going to give you an award-worthy interpretation of puzzlement, alarm and freaking the f-out.

Wilson co-stars in, steps behind the camera to direct and even sings in the closing credits song in his latest, “Insidious: The Red Door.” The movie’s a near triumph of murky tone and general spookiness. And the acting is sharp, up and down the line, another testament to actors turning director. They know what their players need.

The plot? It’s a muddle, especially if all these titles run together and the through-line of this “Poltergeist” derived saga of a family being sucked into “The Further” isn’t fresh in your memory.

Wilson doesn’t help matters in this regard by showing up in three horror franchises concurrently. They can’t help but get mixed up in the memory. “Insidious” is the one co-starring Rose Byrne. Vera Farmiga plays his better half in the “Conjuring” and “Annabelle” films about the “Amityville” investigators, the Warrens.

In “The Red Door,” the Lamberts have broken up. Josh (Wilson) has just lost his mother ( Barbara Hershey , remembered in a photo), and that trauma may be triggering things in him that Renai (Byrne) had just as soon not have around.

A prologue tells us that after the last “Insidious” visitation from “The Further,” Josh and tween son Dalton were hypnotized and told to erase “the past year.”

Now Dalton ( Ty Simpkins ) is an aspiring artist headed off to college, and Josh is having recovered-memory flashbacks. Father and son aren’t communicating, which is a pity. Because if Josh remembers anything, it might be the “astral projection” that goes on when one dozes off under the right conditions.

Mom, who didn’t go under hypnosis, might have clearer answers, but she’s busy raising their other two kids and she’s not talking.

Josh is visited and haunted at his mother’s house. Nightmare-tormented Dalton has only his accidental college roomie Chris’s ( Sinclair Daniel ) Black Girl Magic, empathy and facility with Google Search to lean on.

The movie features the requisite jolts, few of which have much punch. But the first truly creepy thing in it is a lulu. Josh is texting in his parked SUV, unaware of the unfocused, grunge-attired figure behind his car which is barely discernable as human. Ish.

The film’s depiction of college life is an amusing mix of cliches — the frat “baby” party (wearing diapers, eating “diaper pudding” out of other diapers) — and a bracing college art class built around two bravura scenes with Hiam Abbass (“Blade Runner: 2049,” “The Visitor” and “Munich”). She plays the demanding professor whose “dredge up your darkest, innermost thoughts” is what triggers Dalton to start having nightmares and “astral projection” strolls and forces him to recover memories he was hypnotized out of at age 10.

Wilson doesn’t utterly lose the thread, but “The Red Door” tends to meander, over-decorating the monstrous “Entity” scenes, reaching for “explanations” that explain nothing other than “This franchise will go on” and serving up a littl e Tiny Tim to set the mood.

One sure way to gauge a horror film’s success is whether it shocks and shakes you, makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. That never happened for me, here. For all the interesting performances and promising characters in this one, I think the actor/director and actor’s director lets us off the hook entirely too easily.

Well at least he gets to sing again, if only over the properly creepy rocker playing under the closing credits.

Rating: PG-13 for violence, terror, frightening images, strong language and suggestive references

Cast: Ty Simpkins, Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Sinclair Daniel, Hiam Abbass and Lin Shaye..

Credits: Directed by Patrick Wilson, scripted by Scott Teems, based on Leigh Whannell’s characters and story. A Sony/Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:47

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Excellent review. Agree totally.

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Movie Review: ‘Insidious: The Red Door’ fails to scare up a winning formula for franchise’s finale

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Patrick Wilson in Screen Gems’ “Insidious: The Red Door.” (Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Ty Simpkins in Screen Gems’ “Insidious: The Red Door.” (Sony Pictures via AP)

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The “Insidious” franchise folds back on itself for the fifth installment, returning to its roots with the movie equivalent of getting the (traumatized) band back together.

Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Rose Byrne and Andrew Astor reunite for “Insidious: The Red Door,” and whether or not you’ll want to push this door open may depend on how much of a completist you are. For many, leaving it shut may be just fine.

The new movie takes place nine years after the events of 2013’s “Insidious: Chapter 2,” and the heroic Lambert family is not doing well. Dad (Wilson) and mom (Byrne) are divorced and their college-aged son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), pretty much hates dad. “You really don’t know me!” he wails.

The push-pull of fathers and sons is a prominent theme here, but the roots of this particular father-son unhappiness may have to do with the fact that they have suppressed memories of wrestling with demons in a twilight realm called The Further.

The Further — a sort of Upside Down, but long before “Stranger Things” — is described as “a world far beyond our own, yet it’s all around us, a place without time as we know it, a dark realm filled with the tortured souls of the dead, a place not meant for the living.” So like Hollywood?

Dad and son share a special gift — the ability to astral project, or leave their bodies and drift into other worlds. But the cost is high — the son was in a coma for a year and a demon possessed dad, who then tried to slaughter the family. Memories of that were supposed to be wiped away.

Dad and son in the new installment gradually unlock The Further and return to navigate it, but the movie gradually falls apart into incoherence and the use of jumpscares of shocking images, like creepy dolls in a birdcage, a demon vomiting or circus contortionists emerging from sofas.

It’s a pity because Wilson not only acts, he also makes a strong directorial debut and even sings over the end credits, joining the very appropriate Swedish rock band Ghost for “Stay.” It wouldn’t surprise us if Wilson was actually the projectionist at your local cineplex, too.

The screenplay by franchise newcomer Scott Teems feels more like fan fiction, with its loving nods to items associated with the franchise — the camper light, a scary version of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and a box of old photos of dad. Mostly the story just meanders.

In reality, Byrne and Astor have very little screen time and it is Wilson and Simpkins who are the stars, as dad tries to come to grips with why he feels “foggy” and Dalton’s memories are triggered by a swashbuckling art teacher who challenges her class with this motto: “You must let go of your past.”

There are some nifty new touches, most notably a fright-fest in an MRI machine, an already very intimate procedure in a tight place. Chunks of “Insidious: Chapter 2” — the final scene and a crucial fight — are reused liberally, and actor Sinclair Daniel adds comic relief and some sanity as the son’s college friend but her story is abandoned unsatisfactorily at the end. Too many bows are attached to the movie’s final moments as well, reunions not earned or coherent.

If the “Insidious” franchise is your jam, by all means go and see the original Fab Four of the Lambert family battle hollow-eyed demons for perhaps the last time. But for everyone else, why not let the past stay in the past?

“Insidious: The Red Door,” a Sony Pictures release that hits theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for “violence, terror, frightening images, strong language and suggestive references.” Running time: 107 minutes. Two stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://www.insidious.movie

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Insidious: The Red Door Movie Review: Patrick Wilson Stays Aboard a Dying Franchise

The red door stars ty simpkins and rose byrne and is directed by patrick wilson.

Review: Insidious: The Red Door serves as Patrick Wilson’s directorial debut – one that proves too clumsy and uninteresting to save. Loose threads and dull scares overwhelm any hope that Wilson’s charm could’ve elevated it.

Patrick Wilson is insistent that the Insidious franchise goes out with a bang. At least that’s the feeling you get as you watch The Red Door , the fifth entry into the bloated franchise that’s keeping the leading horror actor buried somewhere deep within the James Wan cinematic universe. This time not only is Wilson playing the front man Josh Lambert, but he’s also directing. His first directorial outing, and one I hoped would feel more impactful for the genre.

Unfortunately for Patrick Wilson and Insidious fans everywhere, The Red Door feels like much of the same for a franchise that shouldn’t have ever been a franchise at all. Although box office success and genre fandom would tell you otherwise, not every horror hit has to spawn sequels. It makes sense for some franchises, like the campy Friday the 13 th series or the parodying Scream universe.

But it doesn’t work as well for Insidious , which has been trying to mine new ideas since the first landed with such high appraisal in 2010. The first’s story of a couple struggling through the trauma of their son felt uniquely authentic and sad for the genre, and it didn’t feel yearning for sequels once the credits rolled – even if they were preceded by a James Wan-y final sequence that left the door open for more.

And now nearly 15 years and three movies later, Insidious may finally be coming to a close with The Red Door ; a movie that confirms that the franchise doesn’t really have anything new to convey to audiences. Not thematic ideas and certainly not new scare tactics. Because upon reflection, Insidious: The Red Door is missing one key component for any successful horror blockbuster: it’s not scary whatsoever.

The Red Door begins with a sequence I was thankful for – a flashback revealing that the family had the memories of Josh Lambert ( Patrick Wilson ) and their son Dalton ( Ty Simpkins ) erased. This essentially wipes the board clean for new viewers of the franchise. You could essentially go into the movie without seeing any of the past sequels (although you’d be a tad confused about the mechanics of this world).

Since the last time we saw the Lamberts, both Josh and Dalton have experienced foggy visions of the events of the original, where Josh entered “the further” in order to save the spirit of his son from the lipstick-laden, Darth Maul-cosplaying demon attempting to seize it. Josh hasn’t dealt with this debilitating erasure well, leading to the divorce of his now ex-wife Renai ( Rose Byrne ).

Dalton deals with this condition differently, hoping to fill in the gaps through art. The Red Door starts with Josh attempting to rectify his relationship with Dalton by helping move him to college. It’s clear through their interactions (or lack thereof) that Josh hasn’t been there much for his kids since he and Renai’s divorce. This last-ditch effort to patchwork this relationship doesn’t go well, and the two go their separate ways feeling worse about each other than before.

At his first day of classes, Dalton draws the red door located in “the further” without remembering the purpose of it or where he had seen it previously. He begins to uncover details from his childhood that lead him to the events of the first movie.

This all happens parallel to Josh’s story as he also questions why his memories are faded from years ago. He attempts to get an MRI scan, wondering if it’s a physical ailment that may be treated. This leads to one of the more effective scares of the movie, one that will be inevitably spoiled if you’ve seen any marketing for The Red Door . The following plays as a back-and-forth venture between “the further” and the present as Josh and Dalton face the predatorial spirits attempting to take over their bodies.

Patrick Wilson’s debut is a dreary one, a movie struggling to infuse this moody, grief-stricken genre work with a feeling of impending doom. The first act of Insidious: The Red Door rarely dabbles in horror at all, instead choosing to focus on dramatic elements between the broken Lambert family. Rose Byrne controls many of the scenes early on, presumably because she’s noticeably absent for the entire middle section of the movie. A shame given that she generally elevates even the weakest material.

This gives The Red Door an odd sense of placing in the very convoluted timeline of events in the Insidious universe. For being a film directed at those wanting something that resembles the original, The Red Door tries to scrape up enough of the older elements without bringing in the same characters. Dalton is aged forward ten years, offering Ty Simpkins the chance to do something new with the character who was an elementary student last time we saw him.

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But there doesn’t seem to be much characterization to Dalton beyond being haunted by his demons and surely listening to his fair share of My Chemical Romance. I was disappointed to see how uninterested writer Scott Teems’ script was in trying to peel back layers within the family. Even Josh’s flat storyline regarding his father’s experience with astral projection felt thrown in at the last minute to create one more set piece offering a much-needed scare (although I will say, that scare in Josh’s house may be my personal favorite in the movie).

Wilson’s direction is fine , but there’s not much opportunity to show creative ingenuity when there aren’t many promising pieces to work with in the first place. I thought the color palettes were occasionally interesting, but even then, there were some inconsistencies and mistakes in lighting when scenes were too dark to comprehend what was going on.

There are also significant pacing issues to The Red Door . It works at glacial speed to get to “the further,” and the individual scenes that get us there play out much weaker than they were intended to. The movie idles significantly as Dalton uncovers each of the pieces of his past, which results in the finale whimpering out in a shockingly concise final 15 minutes. The build up does not justify the climax in this one.

Perhaps Patrick Wilson just wanted to take a step back and sit behind the camera once he read where this movie was attempting to go – which would make sense given that there are long stretches where Josh is absent from the movie. This really is Dalton’s story, and I wasn’t prepared to spend so much time with a character offering so little beyond plot points he needed to get across. Simpkins gets a few moments to shine – I particularly thought he was a good physical actor in many of the practical scares, but there weren’t enough dramatic moments to chew on in this thinly-layered script.

If Insidious: The Red Door marks the end of the Insidious franchise, perhaps that will give everyone involved a chance to move onto new projects with *hopefully* better results. Although I wasn’t all too interested in Patrick Wilson’s directorial debut, I still want to see him try his hand at another movie, one where he’s not trying to tie up so many loose threads from four movies prior.

Genre: Horror , Thriller

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Insidious: The Red Door Cast and Credits

Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert

Ty Simpkins as Dalton Lambert

Rose Byrne as Renai Lambert

Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier

Sinclair Daniel as Chris

Director: Patrick Wilson

Writer: Leigh Whannell , Scott Teems

Cinematography: Autumn Eakin

Editors: Derek Ambrosi , Michel Aller

Composer: Joseph Bishara

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Insidious: The Red Door

2023, pg-13, 107 min. directed by patrick wilson. starring patrick wilson, ty simpkins, rose byrne, hiam abbass, sinclair daniel, andrew astor., reviewed by jenny nulf , fri., july 14, 2023.

The shrieking of string instruments, the bright red title card flashing like a light bulb about to burn out: It’s time for another Insidious film.

I often cite my favorite cinematic experience as seeing the first film back in 2010 – the theater was packed, and the screams were excited and often followed by the joyful cackling of laughter. The first Insidious film was a perfect PG-13 horror movie, a clever mash-up of creepy and playful that felt like a thrill ride. Once James Wan left the series after the second film, both Leigh Whannell and Adam Robitel sat in the director’s chair and tried to replicate his magic, to diminishing returns, so when it was announced that Patrick Wilson, star of the first two films, was returning to the franchise to direct his own installment, Insidious: The Red Door , you would have been correct to be wary.

What’s admirable about Wilson’s directorial debut is that he doesn’t try to ape Wan’s vision. It's a refreshing change of pace for a franchise installment, but also a choice that is alienating to those who expect a rehash of the same old. You can see Wilson’s influences, from The Sixth Sense (a frat ghost caked in vomit is reminiscent of Mischa Barton’s jump scare in Shyamalan’s film) to Kiyoshi Kurosawa (ghosts slowly creeping their way toward the camera in the background are reminiscent of Pulse , Cure , and Retribution ). It’s a bit like a reel for Wilson, a “look what I can do” showcase, which is what keeps the film from faltering. It’s intriguing that Wilson didn’t succumb to a copycat version of Insidious or Insidious: Chapter 2 with The Red Door , and unfortunately a jumbled, underdeveloped script thwarts him from the film reaching its full potential.

Scott Teems’ screenplay is a rough one, opening the door to a story that perhaps never needs to be unlocked. The fifth film focuses on the relationship between Josh Lambert (Wilson) and his eldest son, Dalton (Simpkins), both of whom have been previously established as astral projectors. The Red Door tries to pick up the pieces of the delayed aftermath of a traumatic childhood event, which sort of works until it falls apart in the film’s third act, where the rulebook to the Further (the ghostly dimension that hosts both demons and the dead) is tossed out the window. Josh and Dalton have to work together to once again defeat the Lipstick-Face Demon, but the methodical pacing of the first two acts is cast aside to speed up to an anticlimactic finale with diminishing returns. “We need to remember, even the things that hurt,” is recited, a looming quote that bangs you over the head to sum up the themes of repression that run rampant in The Red Door .

Every bone in my body roots for the Insidious films, because the theatrical experience they have ignited in the past is a rush. Similar to Wan’s The Conjuring universe, Insidious has long overstayed its welcome, reaching the point where its spark has quelled and there’s nothing interesting buried within these characters anymore. We have reached the end of the Further.

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Jenny Nulf, Dec. 29, 2023

Matthew Monagle, Feb. 11, 2022

April 5, 2024

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Insidious: The Red Door , Patrick Wilson , Patrick Wilson , Ty Simpkins , Rose Byrne , Hiam Abbass , Sinclair Daniel , Andrew Astor

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