Insidious: The Red Door is a film about reconnecting with one’s past and mending broken bonds with one’s family.

Nine years ago, the Lambert family was haunted by entities from another realm. Having survived a horrific incident (see Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2), Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and his son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), decided to suppress their memories of the events, forgetting their ability to perform astral projection - a feat that allows their souls to leave their bodies while they sleep. A decade later, Dalton has just started college as an arts major. After being prompted to uncover his deepest and darkest memories in a drawing class, Dalton inadvertently unlocks the very piece of his memory meant to be secured in the depths of his mind. Strange things start happening to both father and son, and soon enough, they realise that while they may have forgotten all about their demons, their demons certainly have not forgotten about them.

To start, Insidious: The Red Door is a solid entry into the franchise. It is enjoyable, filled with some good scares and has an emotional core that works for the most part. There are two key things the film did right. First, this fifth installment decides to go back to its roots and focuses its story on the Lambert family.

In the past, the franchise has gone to less interesting places by choosing to focus on the various cases of Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye). Granted, with the second chapter book-ending the Lambert haunting in a neat way, the alternative was to focus on Elise, the warm and approachable psychic character. The results are, however, mixed with those prequels, as each prequel ventures further and further away (no pun intended) from what made the first film especially endearing. By going back to the Lambert family and telling the story of what happened to them after all those years, the Red Door manages to reconnect the audience with what made many of us fall in love with the story of Insidious in the first place – our care for the family. And just like the characters reconnecting with their pasts, most of us are reconnecting with the family in the film, making it an emotional journey to go through together.

Second is the limited involvement of Elise and the previously inescapable comedic sidekick duo, Specs and Tucker. In this film, they are cameos and merely function as exposition for the audience to catch up on astral projection and the Further. What this does is allow Josh and Dalton to figure it all out themselves (due to their lack of memory), and as a result, the film manages to zoom in on the characters more so than ever before in the franchise. This pays off well as both characters go on parallel journeys of rediscovering what was long lost.

On the technical side, the scares are pretty much what you expect and they are mostly serviceable, with a few notably good exceptions. Patrick Wilson is on the helm for the first time as director and he understands the maxim that character is key. Horror just will not work if the audience does not care about the characters. And it is this focus on the characters that prevents the film from being reduced to a haunted house ride. That being said, the film can be mechanical at times with its attempts to replicate James Wan’s horror mechanics. This is by no means a criticism of James Wan but a testament to Wan’s brilliance, as many films have attempted but failed to achieve the same effect. What we usually have with these attempts are arrays of horror set pieces lined up to be sprung on the audience like clockwork, utterly cold and mechanical. Unfortunately, Wilson’s directorial debut can sometimes feel that way.

There is, however, one scare that I particularly enjoy. Not because I did not see it coming, but I certainly did not expect to be grossed out by it (some projectile was involved). In the screening I went to, most screamed in terror, but the scene genuinely cracked me up. This is perhaps the most unexpectedly laugh-out-loud scare that I can remember experiencing in a horror film in a while.

I would like to end the review with more of a personal note. Both the Insidious and the Conjuring franchises have been very important to me as a horror fan, especially because The Conjuring is the first horror film I ever watched, and Insidious: Chapter Two is the first horror film I watched in the cinema. Both franchises defined horror for me when I was a teenager, and I believe I am not alone in thinking that. I remember when The Conjuring came out, and being underage, many of us took it as a challenge to watch the 18-rated film. Unsurprisingly, it took over our school, and subsequent releases of each Insidious and Conjuring film never failed to become the talk of the month as everyone shared experiences of being scared silly in the cinemas. What I am particularly fond of, however, is my memory of watching Insidious: Chapter 2 in the cinema with my mum. This experience has evolved into a regular thing where both of us spend time together watching a great deal of horror films whenever we can.

In a way, I feel protective of both franchises. I could go on more about how I listened to Joseph Bishara’s soundtrack for the films late into the night as I did revision for my uni exams, or how the films helped me get through some tough times, but words just cannot convey the place the films have in my heart. Much like the Scream films did for teenagers in the 90’s, the Friday the 13th films in the 80’s, or the Exorcist back in the 70’s, Insidious will live on to become one of the defining horror films of this generation, and I am just glad that as an adult and an unapologetic horror fan, I am able to revisit the franchise and watch it with a more mature and analytic lens, yet still reliving the joyful memories from years ago.

All in all, Insidious: The Red Door is a solid entry into the franchise. Despite its flaws, the film’s desire to reconnect with its roots resonated with me, and I am delighted to be able to revisit the cinema particularly with my mum for this final entry.

Author: Chia Jing Heng (andreusjh99)