Insidious: The Red Door misses a remarkable opportunity to finish the story the series started. The bulk of the film focuses on reminding us of what happened in the first two films while flaunting some good old-fashioned jump scares to hold our intrigue. Consequently, the story doesn’t take off until after an hour of filler and exposition, which isn’t entirely engaging.

Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) takes his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) to college. Neither of them can remember the events surrounding Dalton’s coma as a child. Both are brutally reminded however as the evil spirits they evaded almost a decade ago return to haunt them.

The Characters

I don’t think I was alone in being surprised at the announcement of another Insidious sequel. It had been four years since The Last Key and from what I read following that film’s release, I assumed that a fifth instalment wasn’t a possibility. Not only was I surprised at the film being made but I was thrilled to see that it had brought back the Lambert family, characters we hadn’t seen since Chapter 2.

It’s been years since I’ve seen of any of the previous films but I do recall watching Chapter 3 and The Last Key and feeling that the series had lost its identity and devolved into a generic yearly horror franchise like Paranormal Activity.

With the Lamberts’ return, The Red Door has a great opportunity to show how they’ve lived since the events of Chapter 2 and give their characters one last hurrah. The film attempts both of these tasks with minimal success.

The film takes place nine years after Insidious: Chapter 2 and we learn that in that time Josh and his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) have divorced. Josh has good relations with all his children except Dalton. He attempts to rekindle their bond by driving Dalton to college and helping him move into his student accommodation but when they arrive, an argument erupts between them and they part on bad terms. It’s during this period of being apart that Dalton and Josh witness supernatural events and begin to remember what occurred during Dalton’s coma.

The first 20 minutes showing how strained Josh and Dalton’s relationship has become is pretty solid honestly, it’s good drama and makes for a compelling first act. The second act however does nothing but chronicle all the creepy things Dalton sees at his dorm and Josh in his house. The film slows to a halt as you’re sitting waiting for these characters to remember what you already know and get on with the story.

Despite all the flashbacks to the first two films, The Red Door almost feels like a soft reboot of the franchise. All the scenes of Dalton in college and Josh at home are like the ones with the podcasters in 2018’s Halloween or the shadow puppet sequences in Candyman. They seem to be there to get people who haven’t seen the first two films caught up. If The Red Door was conceived as a soft reboot from the beginning then Insidious should be up there with Spider-Man as the quickest franchise to reboot itself.

It’s only in the last 40 minutes when the characters we last saw in Chapter 2 return and bring us to the climax. These scenes are definitely rewarding as there are a ton of callbacks to the previous films but it’s also great to see Josh and Dalton go back into The Further and use all their experiences that were repressed.

The ending, while conclusive, feels less effective than the film believes it is. It’s difficult to fall in love with these characters again when we’ve just reunited with them at the last minute. Placing the scenes where Josh and Dalton learn about their pasts earlier in the narrative would’ve given them more time as their true selves and bettered our investment in them.

The Horror

There are some good moments of suspense in The Red Key similar to those in the original Insidious. In their own ways, they all depict entities verging into Josh and Dalton’s realities without their knowledge, forcing us to internally cry ‘it’s behind you!’

Except for those moments, The Red Key is another jump scare fest, which isn’t a bad thing. All of the jumps are effective and it’s not like the original Insidious was too high and mighty to implement the technique. The horror is generic for the most part but honestly that’s far from being its biggest flaw.

I hope The Red Key gets a sequel because if this is supposed to be a swansong for the Lamberts then it’s a botched effort. Another sequel would be another opportunity after all.

I give Insidious: The Red Door a dull 6 out of 10.