Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
In college, I had to read "Death of a Salesman" for the first time. I don't remember much about it except for the broad strokes, but one thing did stick with me. There's a scene where Willy is talking to, I believe it's his neighbor, and he realizes that with his life insurance, he's worth more dead than alive. I didn't have life insurance then, so although I remembered the scene, it didn't resonate with me much. Now that I have to re-up my insurance every year, it's a super off-putting thing to be reminded. On that optimistic note, let's discuss...
Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
This is a weird series for me. When it first came out, everyone told me how scary it was. When I finally got a chance to watch it, I had been prepared to jump a lot, but I just didn't. It was a good movie and had some scary moments, but I think I drank too much of the Kool-Aid. What I found interesting about the series is that I liked them more as the series went on. I enjoyed the sequel more than the original, and the third one even more than that one. The fourth, The Last Key, I remember nothing about it except that the baddie has keys for fingers and that I wasn't that impressed by it as a whole. I was curious if number five would be a return to form, or a continuation of the gradual slide.
After taking a break from the Lambert family for two movies, we pick up their story nine years after the events of the sequel. If you remember, at the end of their last movie, Josh and Dalton were hypnotized to have all memories of The Further wiped from their minds. In that time, the family fractured. Renai couldn't deal with the stress of hiding it from her husband, even though everyone agreed on it. Josh is living in a fog, terrified he's going to end up like his dad, who split when he was a child, so they ended up getting divorced. Meanwhile, Dalton can't remember a single thing about when he was 10, and it may as well be the Grand Canyon when looking at how far father and son have drifted apart.
So, Dalton is off to college, and Renai (Rose Byrne) suggests Josh (Patrick Wilson) drive him. The trip goes as well as you'd expect, ends with a blowup, and Josh leaving. But we do meet Josh's roommate, Chris; the only problem is, Chris is a woman, and the college won't let them change until the next day. She quickly becomes Dalton's ride or die and is willing to face whatever horrors come their way.
I don't know exactly how I feel about Chris. Normally, I'm not a fan of characters like hers, where they constantly act like they're performing for an invisible crowd by being snarky and seemingly above the horror all around them. For an example of what I mean, refer back to any Scream review I've done involving "The Core Four" and go to my thoughts about Mindy. Despite my distaste for characters like that, I liked Chris. For starters, she did have a point plotwise to be there, and when the situation got serious, she, for the most part, got serious along with it.
This is a weird movie because, while at its core, Insidious is a series about ghosts and Darth Maul sharpening his nails to happy music. But this one seems to be all about trauma. Josh and Renai are divorced, Josh's kids don't like him, and he can't even tell Dalton that he loves him. We delve into Dalton's forgotten memories and how his unconscious is starting to bring them to the fore, but without the necessary context, his limited memories make his father look like a monster. Then we have Josh dealing with the emotional loss of his family, the death of his mother and the haunting memory of his dad's sudden suicide when he was much younger, all the while realizing he's becoming more and more like his father. And all of this is going on while Dalton is just settling in after moving to college.
There's a lot to unpack with this movie, and it's not outright scary like the other ones try to be because the family drama plays a very central role. Still, it's nice seeing the Lamberts back together. Well, Josh and Renai... the kids never really left a mark for me, but I do really like Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne after a detour in the third and fourth installments. Also, this movie seems to wrap up the Lambert storyline, so while it's disappointing that I most likely won't be seeing Josh and Renai again, their story did wrap up in a satisfying way.
I mentioned earlier how it wasn't trying to be scary like the other ones; there are some good moments. This movie does one of my favorite types of scenes a few times, and it always makes me smile. It's when the camera is focused on the foreground, but there's something in the background that is clearly something menacing and coming their way. Meanwhile, the people front and center have no idea of the danger until it's literally right in front of them. My favorite example is the scene from In the Mouth of Madness where Sam Neill and another guy are at a diner, and they have no idea there's a man carrying an ax coming right towards them.
As far as where it stands in the pecking order, I don't remember many details from the other movies outside of the first one, and I can't tell you anything about the fourth one except, like I mentioned earlier, the baddie had keys for fingers and would steal your voice like Ursula from The Little Mermaid. But this one is up there with my favorites in the series. One of the biggest disappointments in this movie was that they couldn't get the entire band back together. I understand there's not much storyline ways they could bring back Carl, Elise, Specs and Tucker, but it didn't feel the same without them. Sure, there were cameos to scratch that itch, but I would have liked to have seen more, although Elise did get to put her stamp on the movie.
Finally, did anyone else know they already released a sequel back in August? Insidious: Out of the Further. I had no idea. I don't think I saw a single commercial or advertisement for it. Weird.
THe Rating
Postscript...
One thing about the original that people pointed out as refreshing was that the first time Renai believes the house is haunted, Josh says, "Alright, let's move." Then the next scene shows them moving into a brand new place. That scene aged terribly. As someone who has been super frustrated with the housing market, I can't imagine too many people nowadays going through house hunting again so soon after getting a house for the first time. If the original were made today, I can imagine the protagonists saying, "Fuck you, ghosts! You're going to have to get used to us, because we're going through that process again!"
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