Insidious: The Red Door: A daft and disposable, instantly forgettable horror sequel

Insidious: The Red Door (M, 107 mins) Directed by Patrick Wilson *½

Maybe the very funniest thing about Insidious: The Red Door, is the writer’s delusional belief that anyone should remember, or even care, what happened in Insidious: Chapter 2, way back in the hallowed days of 2013.

The Insidious franchise is a kind of disowned little brother to The Conjuring series of films. The films don’t share a “universe” or have any characters in common, and are made by different studios, but Insidious and Conjuring were both created by the genius Australian – credit where it’s due – James Wan, and some of his favourite collaborators have credits on both series.

Confusingly, both series’ star Patrick Wilson, which explains why I spent the first 20 minutes of Red Door wondering when Vera Farmiga was going to show up and exactly when Farmiga’s screen husband had found the time and the chutzpah to knock out a couple of troubled sons with the otherwise blameless Rose Byrne.

After a while, it dawned on me that Wilson was not here playing the emotionally constipated demonologist Ed Warren, but was instead pretending to be all-American dad and unlikely survivor of a demonic possession – Josh Lambert.

This instalment has skipped over Insidious 3 and 4 – and picks up the story a decade after whatever happened in Chapter 2. The film-makers are at least kind enough to include a lengthy flashback scene of Wilson trying, with bloodless incompetence, to murder his own family with a hammer. It’s a clear nod to The Shining I guess, but with infinitely more unintentional laughs.

Ten years later, the divorced-but-hilariously-still-welcome-to-dinner Wilson is dropping his eldest son off at college, when history starts to repeat and, y’know, demons and stuff.

The Red Door is Wilson’s directorial debut. After a career as one of Hollywood’s favourite scream-kings, I guess someone thought Wilson had seen enough to get behind the camera himself. Unfortunately, that was only party true.

There are a few effective scenes in The Red Door and some of the casting is more than OK. Hiam Abbass (Paradise Now) owns the film for a few lamentably brief scenes as a dementedly committed art teacher with a serious crush on the black Goyas. (Google that if you must. But don’t come crying to me if you have nightmares) If there has to be a sequel to this sequel, can we at least get more of Abbass?

Ty Simpkins (The Whale) is fine as son Dalton and Sinclair Daniel (Bull) is always the most interesting person on screen as Dalton’s college buddy Chris.

On the downside, no one showed Wilson the chapter in “The Idiot’s Guide To Making a Movie” that deals with pace and timing. The film ambles between the set-pieces like it had nowhere special to be and no reason to get there. The scene that felt to me like the actual beginning of the story, doesn’t turn up until around the 20-minute mark. For a daft and disposable horror flick, that’s unforgivable.

And then there’s the script. The Red Door mostly plays as though someone read the outlines for three or four average horror movies and then watched a couple of episodes of Stranger Things with a bottle of gin and a mild concussion. And then in the morning, scribbled down whatever they remembered and handed it to Wilson to make something of. The story is a flabby, unfocused mess with no clear protagonist, stakes or purpose.

A genius might have been able to rescue The Red Door in the edit suite or with re-shoots, but I’m guessing genius costs more than The Red Door was worth to save.

Insidious: The Red Door is now screening in cinemas nationwide.