Never Ending Movie Carnival
Never Ending Movie Carnival
Insidious: The Red Door movie review: quality scares
What: Insidious: The Red Door offers quality scares, creepy ghosts of the past and an obscure climax.
Insidious: The Red Door movie review
Dark, Troubling and Unsettling – the horror thriller The horror thriller revolves around the Lambert family and psychic Elise Rainer as they encounter ghosts and demons from The Further, and is a befitting ode to the decade old franchise.
A few minutes into the film, we see Josh at a hospital undergoing a brain MRI – the chamber gets closed and there is weird horrifying noise. Josh (Patrick Wilson) shouts but no is there to listen- he gets paranoid. The scene makes you claustrophobic and squeamish. This time, Patrick dons the director’s hat to offer you quality scares. Insidious is creepy and obscure with the introduction of a new phenomenon – the Astral Projection.
Insidious: The Red Door, the fifth movie in the franchise, follows the events of 2013’s Insidious: Chapter 2; Chapter 3 (2015) and Insidious: The Last Key (2018) which were the prequels. After following the Lambert family for the first two movies and then shifting the franchise to prequels about Elise, the Insidious 5 cast brings the various story threads together for another thrill following the Lamberts - and this time, its the son, Dalton who experiences the scary astral phenomenon.
Burying the horrific events deep in their subconscious minds through effective hypnosis, Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins) and his dad Josh (Patrick Wilson) escape ‘The Further’, which is surely not the best way to deal with their trauma. After ten years, Josh and Renai (Rose Byrne) are divorced while Dalton is an angst-ridden, defiant teen drawing pictures of the gory past but not given to communicating with his parents. He talks to his younger brother, Foster (Andrew Astor), though.
Dalton studies art from the hugely talented Professor Armagan (Hiam Abbass). Josh hopes to re-establish a bond with Dalton on the long drive to his idyllic, ivy-league university but it does not go too well with father and son screaming at each other.
On Dalton’s first day at art school, Armagan encourages the students to delve into their subconscious and create artwork. Dalton’s delving unleashes all manner of nasties. Chris (Sinclair Daniel), Dalton’s roommate, does some quick research and then astral projection comes into play.
The first half piques your interest with lot of intrigue and chills but the second half doesn't live up to the expectations erected. The writing material by Scott Teems (Halloween Kills, The Quarry) and Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man, Saw) is competently staged by Patrick, but he gets trapped in the whirlpool of hazy memories and ghostly apparitions from the past. It leads to an obscure climax.
Patrick delivers a restrained performance and so does Ty. Sinclair Daniel gives a free-spirited and free-willed spin to her character, Chris.
I go with 3 stars out of 5 for Insidious: The Red Door.
The 1 hour 47 minutes film is running at theatres near you.
PS: Insidious: The Red Door’ Rated PG-13 for Violence and Frightening Images
Ahwaan Padhee, is an IT Techie/Business Consultant by profession and a film critic/cinephile by passion, is also associated with Radio Playback as well, loves writing and conducting movie quizzes. More By Ahwaan Padhee