If you want jolts, you’ve come to the right place, but if you’re looking for human depth or drama, try something else. This is typical of Insidious, the horror franchise that’s essentially a jump-scare machine at this point. With Leigh Whannell once again in the writer’s chair and the film’s star, Patrick Wilson, making his directorial debut, Insidious: The Red Door is another conveyor belt of frights that lives up to the original, even if it fails to deliver in storytelling, which this time, concerns a family separated by the ghostly fog of doubt.
The movie –which topped the box office this past weekend– doesn’t have much new or interesting to say compared with the first two James Wan-directed movies. Two prequels followed those films so Red Door marks a return to the Lambert family. After a brief recap on how this supernatural stuff works– something about a twilight realm called “The Further”– we pick back up with the murky subplot. Josh Lambert (Wilson) accidentally tried to kill his children in a previous entry, which causes his oldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) to cut ties. Understandably he wants to make amends, so he decides to drive his surly teenager across the country to college.
Teens just love going on road trips with their parents, but before they can argue about who’s on aux, Dalton starts seeing dead bodies and soon becomes utterly consumed by them. Nothing says father-son bonding like a trip to The Further. The place is a carnival of grief, with creepy dolls in bird cages, contortionists in clown makeup and entities with their skin burned off. It’s a manifestation of trauma, since every horror flick since Hereditary needs to have Freudian undertones and long monologues about how pain stems from family lineage. Of course, the horrific situation gives dad the chance to save his son and maybe even their relationship. It’s all nonsense, but luckily the script ditches the jargon for a more intriguing and violent second…
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