"Insidious: The Red Door" doesn't go much further but does find closure

Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

Never has a screechy, atonal score of a hundred violins felt like home as it does here. It’s the calling card that opens each of the entries in the “Insidious” series, and what we do at the beginning we do at the end. Neither James Wan nor Leigh Whannell are directing this time, but Patrick Wilson (who has doubled dipped in Wan’s two titan horror franchises) makes his directorial debut with “Insidious: The Red Door,” a solid if ultimately sentimental final chapter in the “Lambert family trilogy.”

After two prequels that gave us more Lin Shaye, this direct sequel to “Insidious: Chapter 2” picks back up with the Lambert family. Time has actually passed, nine years to be exact. The Lambert family reunites to put Grandma Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) to rest. Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) have divorced, but Dad still gets to see his three kids on his given weekends. The eldest, Dalton (Ty Simpkins), is about to go to a liberal arts college as an art major, and Josh offers to drive him. Father and son each share a talent for astral projection, though neither one remembers their abilities, anything about the dark realm of The Further, or the events of the first two films. Their relationship is already strained as can be, but Josh experiences major brain fog and Dalton desperately seeks the truth about his “coma” when he was just 10. Both father and son will have to make their own discoveries to face their repressed traumas and close “the red door” for good.

Director Wilson and screenwriter Scott Teems (“Halloween Kills”) trust that we’re already emotionally invested in this family. There’s no time for a whole “Previously on ‘Insidious’…” recap, although there is helpful footage of “Insidious: Chapter 2.” If you’re already clued in, it is more of the same but more conclusive with a neat little bow. The film’s first half is decidedly the strongest, structurally sound and character-driven as it’s actually interested in the people involved. It might take a while to start paying everything off, working in fits and starts, but there seems to be actual care made in crafting a family drama. Impatient viewers will be disappointed they don’t get a scare-a-minute fright machine, although the jolts do eventually come. The word “insidious” does mean gradual after all. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com.

Grade: B -

Sony released "Insidious: The Red Door" (107 min.) in theaters on July 7, 2023.