Horror Movie Review: Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

The fifth and final (yeah, sure) entry in the Insidious franchise, Insidious: The Red Door returns the story to the Lambert family and acts as direct sequel to Insidious: Chapter 2. Directed by Patrick Wilson (in his directorial debut), the story comes from Leigh Whannell and Scott Teems, with the latter also responsible for the screenplay.

It sees a number of original Insidious cast members reprising their roles, including Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Andrew Astor, Steve Coulter, Joseph Bishara, and Ty Simpkins.

You read our reviews of the other entries in the Insidious series below.

2011 – Insidious
2013 – Insidious: Chapter 2
2015 – Insidious: Chapter 3
2018 – Insidious: The Last Key

The latter playing a now grown-up Dalton who has grown apart from his father, Josh. In fact, the entire family has grown apart. Josh and Renai are now divorced, the latter’s mother, Lorraine, has passed away, and the children are distant.

Part of that comes from the fact that Josh is really struggling to express himself and he has a head full of fog. Something that might be related to his and Dalton’s memories of the previous film’s events being suppressed by hypnosis. Josh attempts to bond more with Dalton by dropping him off at college, but their lack of common ground results in an argument.

Hurt by this, Josh decides to make amends, but first he needs to investigate just why he is having such memory problems. Likewise, Dalton is having his own problems and they are heightened when his art teacher encourages him to draw something from the deepest recesses of his memory.

Dalton ends up drawing a red door. The red door used to enter the ‘spirit’ world known as The Further. Dalton is disturbed by what he drew, but it also has a familiarity that he can’t understand. So he becomes determined to understand, with the help of his new friend, Chris (Sinclair Daniel).

Separately, both Josh and Dalton start to tug on threads in their minds. Unravelling the truth behind their lapses in memory and what impatiently waits for them in the Further.

Scene by scene, sequence by sequence, Insidious: The Red Door gets progressively worse. Resulting in the poorest entry in the series so far. Filled with the laziest of jump scares, the most half-hearted attempts at creating emotion, and the most lacklustre of resolutions. If anyone is hoping for more detail about the infamous demonic entity or the Further, this movie is going to really disappoint. Theres is nothing progressive here, and the focus is on the Lambert family.

Which would be great if we spent time with the family and got more depth around how the events of the first two films tore them apart. Instead, everyone but Josh and Dalton disappear for most of the film, and when they do come back into it, they don’t do anything. Josh and Dalton stories are told separately, only reuniting for the finale, and neither is particularly compelling. Lacking interesting story beats, feeling far too familiar, and with some really awkward moments.

Which brings us to the biggest crime of all and that is how Insidious: The Red Door just isn’t scary. It’s packed with jump scares, so if that’s your jam, you’re going to get your fill here. Yet, even then, Insidious: The Red Door has some of the laziest and unrewarding ones of the entire franchise. Couple this with the total lack of tension and dread, something the franchise was really good at doing, and this movie starts to really feel like a chore.

What it needed to do was deliver a big ending. Something that felt final. Something that would send this franchise off to the Further with a bang. Guess what? The ending is lacklustre and flat. A big showdown with the demonic entity never materialises and while it is nice to draw a line under the Lambert family, it doesn’t feel satisfying at all.

Does this final entry actually mean final though? More than likely for this family, but if you wait until the credits have rolled, you might see something that suggest this franchise isn’t quite dead and buried yet.