‘Insidious: The Red Door’ is insistent on delivering the jump scares, but to what end? Plus, what red doors mean to different cultures…

A red door often symbolises something positive.

In the US, during the Civil War, doors were painted red so as to let travelers know via code that a particular house was a safe haven. In London, the door of 10 Downing Street (where shoddy politicians run their dirty business) was painted red under the instruction of PM Tony Blair – apparently to symbolise socialism.

Red doors are painted on churches to signal these were places of sanctuary, refuge and safety (not sure if all priests got that memo). The Chinese painted doors red to attract positive energy and fortune. The Scottish would paint theirs red to notify folks that they’d paid off their mortgage (an odd tradition, that one) while the ol’ Irish opted for red to help ward off evil.

Which brings us to the latest use of a red door…

In the new film Insidious: The Red Door, the horror franchise’s original cast returns for the final chapter of the horrific Lambert family saga (but is there ever really a ‘final chapter’ in horror franchises?).

The film starts with the family at the funeral of Josh Lambert’s (Patrick Wilson) mother in a cemetary where something terrible lingers. Just as the Lamberts are thinking their lives are getting back on track (nine years after demons possessed Josh) things begin to get freakish once more.

Josh’s son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) is inadvertently sent back to the dark realm known as ‘The Further’ each time someone counts backwards from 10 to one. And it seems everyone is doing the counting – his art lecturer; his new freshman bestie; himself…

Once further into The Further, Josh sees visions of bloodied dead folk, every one of them out to get him. Eventually, he starts to paint red doors on giant canvases, several of these oozing with blood because this is a horror movie and a red door must be blood-red.

While the jump-scares in this film are fairly scary, they appear to be randomly placed throughout the movie, some with no rhyme or reason.

After four previous instalments in the ‘Insidious’ franchise you would think the producers and director (Patrick Wilson himself) would have a more cohesive story to tell, but the narrative here often goes out the window for the sake of constantly proffered pop-up horror.

Some scenes work very well, like when Josh is getting an MRI scan and starts imagining strange things while he is seemingly stuck on the machine. The dark setting contrasted with pinhead glints of light in his eyes, matched with the MRI machine’s rumbling and some sinister strings will suddenly have you sensing a similar kind of claustrophobia.

This scene alone proves Wilson can keep his eye on a movie’s aesthetic; keeping it pristine even though he needs to jump in and out of a shot to do so.

But I can’t help thinking that if the film was directed by anyone other than its main star, more focus might have been made on keeping the narrative neater and easier for viewers to wrap our heads around.

With a catalyst such as a red door, there would have been so many great opportunities for the story to meander to uncharted territory yet still make simple sense. Instead, we keep hearing zombie and ghost-like creatures begging for our live humans to “Close the door! Close the door!” and it starts to look like a game of tag after a while.

Red doors and blood blended perfectly well in ‘The Shining’.

If you like horror movies of the ghoulish sort, you’ll very much like Insidious: The Red Door – with or without following its rabbit warren of a storyline. Me? I prefer my monsters solo, in their own movie, free to freak out the characters on-screen and little me on my couch, even after the fifth viewing.

I’ll choose Frankenstein’s monster, Nosferatu or even The Shining‘s Jack Torrance any day over evil taking over too many forms in the one film.

Antonino Tati

Fun fact: The end credits of Insidious: The Red Door scroll to the soundtrack of Patrick Wilson and Ghost covering (very well, I might add) the Shakespears Sister song Stay. Methinks the fabulous Siobhan Fahey’s vocals also sneak back into there, too. (Thanks to Cream reader Kevin for tracking it down on the net for us!). Link here.

‘Insidious: The Red Door’ is in cinemas now.

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