Insidious: The Red Door: Movie Review

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Rose Byrne

Director: Patrick Wilson

Utterly forgettable and an exercise in murky filmmaking in extremis, Patrick Wilson's take on Insidious plays too drawn out and emotionally cold as it ventures deeper into The Further.

Wilson returns as Josh in a story that picks up nearly a decade after the end of Insidious 2 - having elected to have his and his son Dalton's memories wiped following a Shining-like attempted execution, Josh is struggling. 

Divorced from his wife (the sidelined Byrne) and estranged from his son ahead of his college enrolment, Josh is neglecting his trauma and is unable to clear the "fog" that's afflicted his mind and his life.

Meanwhile, Dalton is edging closer to independence as he heads off to college, but is unable to shake the events which left him in a coma for a year. However, when an art class sees his subconscious and repression bubbling through into his work, Dalton begins a dangerous journey which could kill him - and his father.

Insidious: The Red Door suffers the indignity of being a franchise concluder that somehow doesn't do enough to justify any kind of ending.

Darkly shot and murkily executed, it is a horror film that's bereft of anything other than the laziest of tropes and which rarely descends into the nightmare fuel that seems to generate any of the fear everyone has of The Further (which simply looks like someone's turned off the lights and left the smoke machine going).

There are some moments when it excels and taps into something both atmospheric and worthy.

An MRI sequence encapsulates the claustrophobia while generating the requisite creeping dread such a moment needs - and some of the astral projection moments add a little to proceedings as well.

But all too often, Insidious: The Red Door, while trying to play on themes of trauma and the sins of sons and fathers, forgets to build its emotional investment in its audience and makes the entire film a slog rather than a mesmerising conclusion.

Poor pacing and long stretches of nothing happening don't add up to psychological terror, but only serve to bore viewers - Insidious: The Red Door could have been bone-chilling; instead it's just tedious.