Insidious: The Red Door review | A limp, lackluster horror

The film picks up with Wilson’s character Josh Lambert some nine years after he first entered The Further. He’s now divorced from wife Renai (Rose Byrne), while his relationship with his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) has become distant and difficult.

In order to try and patch things up, he volunteers to drive Dalton to his new college, but friction leads to further arguments. Dalton, at least, finds friendship with new roommate Chris (Sinclair Daniel), who is even sympathetic to his strange behaviour like still needing to plug in a night-light in the room.

Things start getting weird when Dalton attends his art class, run by the no-nonsense Professor Armagan (Succession’s Hiam Abbas) and paints a red door, the portal to The Further. While this causes him to see increasingly disturbing visions – including a ghostly pupil vomiting in the bathroom at a frat party – he’s not the only one.

After even trying a hypnotist to get over his past adventures in The Further, Josh is being haunted by visions of his father, who he never really knew as the man abandoned his family years ago. “You got foggy,” accuses his ex-wife, in a rare moment of significance (Byrne’s thankless character is so sidelined, she’s practically non-existent in this film).

Wilson, as a veteran of the franchise, has certainly learnt a thing or two about scares. A scene set in an MRI scanner, with Josh left trapped when the lights suddenly go off, is particularly ghoulish, with the sight of a demonic entity scampering towards him in this confined space.

Likewise, a scene where Josh has stuck various images to his front window, pictures which he keeps flipping up like a game of Guess Who?, is nicely effective; his actions keep obscuring or revealing the ghostly sight of his father, who is a blurred figure standing unnoticed by Josh outside.

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Scripted by Scott Teems, who previously penned Halloween Kills (2021), and based on a story idea by Teems and Insidious creator Leigh Whannell, The Red Door is a film where the phrase ‘anti-climax’ feels fitting.

The build-up, with both father and son facing such terrors, is competently handled. Wilson, as you’d expect from an actor, has a good sense of character, and he knows how to play Josh Lambert in his sleep. But it all leads to absolutely nothing with a final act to forget – one that doesn’t raise the pulse one jot.

Fans of the franchise will be pleased that classic Insidious characters have not been forgotten – notably via a corny-looking YouTube video featuring the spirit inspectors Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), the two that aid psychic Elise Rainer (Lin Shaye), as they explain the concept of astral projection.

The performances are also credible enough – Ty Simpkins (Jurassic World) adeptly leads the film, despite being offered little to work with, while newcomer Sinclair Daniel gives a lively and confident turn as Chris. If only The Red Door had worked harder on its closing scenes this could’ve been a contender, instead of being a limp, lackluster horror.

Insidious: The Red Key is now showing in UK cinemas. Read more of our Film coverage, or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight.

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