Gotta hand it to the kid; every other college guy I know decorated his walls with bikini posters and beer insignias. Not Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins). Oh no. This twisted mister plasters his space with only his own artistic creations. I mean, sure, that’s seriously kinda messed up … but it’s not like he’s painting his own nightmares, taping them to his wall, and then obsessing with them 24/7, right?
Oh.
Never mind.
Woohoo, college! The Hellscapes of the Insidious world have been swapped for haunted frat houses and malevolent keg parties. Why it’s enough to make a guy wish he could go back and relive the days when he was both attacked by homicidal demons and had a biology midterm the next day. Ahhhhh, good times.
In modern fashion … wait, isn’t the Insidious world tied to the 1970s? Why did I have that in my mind? Forget it … in modern fashion, pissed off Dalton arrives on campus to find his roomie Chris (Sinclair Daniel) is not a guy. Chris is surprisingly cool about the mix-up as it gives her a reason to be in the story. Dalton immediately excuses his father, Josh (star and director Patrick Wilson). Dalton and Josh have a shared history of absentee parent/ungrateful son. Such stems from the time years ago when they both went to hypnosis camp to repress demonic memories. Luckily, now there’s an app for that.
With Dalton attending university, his repressed memories have surfaced again to give it that old college try. Can’t say I’m terribly impressed with these memories. They’re scary all right, but their on-again-off-again nature makes me think they’re giving it the old JuCo try. Meanwhile, divorced and alone
with -clearly- nothin’ to do but direct movies, Josh is entertaining similar memories. The difference? Dalton is painting his memories, putting them on his wall, and watching them haunt him in real time.
The Insidious franchise is good at scaring. This is its gift to the cinematic world. Insidious films have a way of personifying nightmares and making them comfortable dinner guests. I’m not sure it does anything else well, however. Insidious: The Red Door has a zero (0) new body count, which makes it tough to take as a serious horror film. There’s also the part where, well, we’ve seen this. We’ve seen possession and obsession and the eerie otherworld. What’s new about Red Door is college, which, IMO, did not get worked as much as it should have. Imagine if there were a demon for every attempted plagiarism, dorm vandalism, or date-rape. This could have been a good ol’ scare and cautionary tale.
Alas. In the end, Insidious: The Red Door was just a scare, and not a terrific one at that. I applaud Patrick Wilson for showing some skill behind the camera, but if he’s gonna do this again, I want to see the film he wants to make, not the fourth sequel in a now tired franchise.
Josh’s memories tell him there is something more
Perhaps a demon hiding behind The Red Door
We can play “what if”
Yet without a stiff
I’m afraid this is Insidious: The Dead Boor
Rated PG-13, 107 Minutes
Director: Patrick Wilson
Writer: Leigh Whannell, Scott Teems
Genre: Spooky U.
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Patrick Wilson’s mom
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “I’m not sure you understand what ‘Insidious’ means”
