Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Insidious: The Red Door’ on Netflix, The Fifth Outing In The Horror Franchise That Continues To Deliver

Insidious: The Red Door (now streaming on Netflix, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) marks five films in the Insidioverse, which launched in 2010 with Insidious, followed by a sequel, Insidious: Chapter Two and two prequels, the confusingly titled Insidious: Chapter 3 (should’ve been Insidious: Chapter 0.5) and Insidious: The Last Key (should’ve been Insidious: Chapter 0.7883499). The Red Door further clutters the timeline, being a direct sequel to Chapter 2, and bringing back principals Patrick Wilson (also making his directorial debut), Ty Simpkins and Rose Byrne. Got all that? More to the point, do you even care if you got all that? A few of you do, probably, but most of you, well, you’re in my boat, and you’re bored out of your mind by this pseudo-atmospheric supernatural-horror generica. 

INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a flashback to the end of Chapter 2, when Josh (Wilson) and Dalton (Simpkins) were hypnotized so they’ll forget the horrible stuff that happened to their family. Josh’s wife Renai (Byrne) and mother Loraine (Barbara Hershey), notably, are not hypnotized, so they remember all the demonic possession and astral planes and attempted murders. NINE YEARS LATER, the family attends a funeral. Loraine has died. Dalton is heading off to college to be an art major – he’s really good at drawing, see. Josh and Renai are divorced. Josh hopes to narrow the emotional gulf between himself and Dalton by driving the kid out to school. The animosity stems from Josh feeling “foggy” and not himself all the time; death and divorce don’t help it at all. Dalton, meanwhile, is a sullen poop who permafrowns his way through everything, and believes that the blank year of his life is due to a coma induced by viral meningitis. 

But we all know that’s a big load of bull plop. The kid’s being forced to bury his trauma, and if anyone knows anything about trauma, it’s that shoveling dirt overtop isn’t going to keep it at bay, because trauma is an undead zombie that must be faced head-on so you can smash its head in with a shillelagh lest it stalk you forever and ever. Dalton’s first-ever college class doesn’t help; his pretentious art prof implores her students to reach deep into the subconscious to find a subject for their drawings, which is a catalyst for some serious psychological vomit. And psychologically vomit Dalton does, furiously scribbling and shading with charcoal As If Possessed, until his hand bleeds all over the door he sketched. And now it’s the thing in the title of the movie, which is the trigger to lead Dalton to a dimly lit parallel universe that’s draped in dry ice fog and swamped in blue light, and allows him to function like a ghost, where other people in reality see things floating through the air and it’s actually just Dalton’s astrally projected body holding those things, which would be a neat party trick if this movie had even the slightest sense of humor.

Oh, and Dalton also can see dead people, like the frat kid who died, presumably from partying too hard bro, and is now eternally spewing extra-chunky pea soup from his face. But I’m getting ahead of myself here – that happens after Dalton starts palling around with Chris (Sinclair Daniel), who soon finds herself implicated in her new friend’s paranormal shenanigans. Meanwhile, Josh tries to get to the bottom of his “fog” by going to the doctor to get his brain scanned and whatnot, and when he sees entities in the dark, e.g., after he’s shoved into that narrow MRI machine, whoa boy, look out, something almost happens there! All this might have something to do with why Josh’s father abandoned the family when he was a lad, or it might just be borderline incoherent foofaraw, it’s hard to tell or care. Just being honest here, folks.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I always get the Insidiouses mixed up with The Conjurings and affiliated spinoffs (Annabelle, The Nun, etc.), and don’t the Sinisters fit in here somewhere maybe? I dunno. If you’re itching to see some paranormal horror affiliated with James Wan, just go watch Malignant again, because it’s wild and funny as hell and unheralded among modern scary films.

Performance Worth Watching: I liked Sinclair Daniel in her limited screen time, since she appears to be the only character capable of smiling without fear of her face shattering into bits and crumbs. 

Memorable Dialogue: Dalton’s Eastern Bloc art prof looks at his The Red Door drawing and asks the key question: “Is it keeping you in, or out?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Insidious: The Red Door is either nonsense or isn’t engaging enough to inspire one to make sense of it. Dramatically, its tires spin but never touch the road. It’s a half-assed story about the things sons inherit from their fathers and offers little more than a cloddish metaphor for not repressing your demons, lest they come back to bite you in that half of an ass. Deep in the third act, Dalton comes to a no-duh conclusion: “We need to remember. Even the things that hurt,” he says, as if it’s a major revelation and not on page two of every Psych 101 textbook. 

Prior to that, we get some of the usual Insidious jump-scare drivel and scads of long, boring sequences in which our gloomy-gus protags take their sweet-ass time piecing together the mystery of the monster that stalks them from an astral plane, or whatever. It’s utterly humorless, and even the melodrama is muted, failing to ever make us feel invested in these characters and their predicament. It’s off-the-rack tame PG-13 horror twaddle, and as a director, Wilson generates blandly glum atmosphere and strikes a flavorless tone. Maybe if you’re a devoted Insidiousite – and I know you’re out there; everything has its niche – it’ll carry greater weight. But for the rest of us, casual fans and first-timers alike, we’ll be hard-pressed to give a single damn about this boring, draggy outing that fails to engender a single memorable moment.

Our Call: Remember, “insidious” is only a few letters away from “insipid.” Earlier franchise chapters featured a few smirkworthy scares and some stylish filmmaking flourishes, but The Red Door is merely an inert, boring drag. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.