Also features art school, a frat party, and a demon who’s been red for so long he’s basically a stop sign with hooves.
Patrick Wilson steps behind the camera for his directorial debut and, bless him, he points it squarely at the franchise’s most persistent ghost: franchise fatigue. Insidious: The Red Door is a film about memory repression that ironically plays like the series repressing anything risky; it keeps remembering the good old scares from Part 1 and 2, then nervously painting black over them like Dalton’s final canvas—only, unlike Dalton, the movie forgets to paint anything underneath.
We pick up with the Lamberts nine years after the last astral mess. Josh (Wilson) has divorced Renai (Rose Byrne, gamely cashing a check while the screenplay leaves her in the waiting room), and son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) is off to college, where he discovers two things: 1) art students love charcoal, and 2) demons thrive on student housing. His first assignment? Draw your trauma. Dalton obliges by accidentally sketching the franchise logo—the titular red door—and reactivating The Further, the series’ gloopy black-light limbo that still looks like a Spirit Halloween photo booth.
Meanwhile, Josh is haunted by a specter with the posture of a disappointed gym teacher, eventually revealed as his father, Ben. This subplot wants to explore inherited trauma but ends up feeling like a side quest in a game you didn’t install—loot box includes one (1) hospital file and zero catharsis. Throw in a vomiting frat ghost, a roommate named Chris (Sinclair Daniel, a bright spot who deserves a movie that knows what to do with her), and some YouTube tutorials by Specs and Tucker, and you get a sequel that treats demonology like a DIY craft. “Welcome back to my astral channel! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and gird your soul.”
Wilson’s direction isn’t incompetent—he has a decent eye for negative space and understands that the scariest thing in a dorm is the shared bathroom—but the movie is polite when it needs to be feral. Scares are queued up like airport announcements: “Attention passengers, a jump scare will be arriving in approximately… now.” Doors creak, violins yelp, shadows lurk in that very specific Insidious way where you can almost hear the production assistant whisper, “Okay, Joseph Bishara sting in three, two—” Speaking of Bishara, his squalling score once helped define this series’ personality; here it’s trapped doing polite cardio on a treadmill of repeated motifs.
The big bad, the Lipstick-Face Demon, remains a striking design—cabaret Satan by way of a Sephora explosion—but he’s treated like a legacy cameo: the crowd goes “oh hey, it’s him,” and then he does one (1) thing. The lair is the same industrial Hell IKEA we’ve visited before, and the set pieces are variations on a theme that was perfected a decade ago. The scariest development is the thought that this demon has better brand consistency than most studios.
What the film wants to be is a father–son reconciliation tale masquerading as a haunted-house ride. That’s not a bad idea. Horror has always been therapy with pyrotechnics. But the script (Scott Teems, from a story with Leigh Whannell) keeps telling us Dalton resents Josh without really showing it beyond sulky glances and a single car-ride spat. When their emotional climax arrives—Josh holding the door in The Further while Dalton paints over trauma—it’s meant to be a grand metaphor about breaking cycles. Instead it plays like the world’s least thrilling home improvement show. “Today on This Old Portal, we’re sealing drafts with matte black.”
The collegiate detour wants to open the world, but mostly provides a change of wallpaper. Professor Armagan (Hiam Abbass) gives Dalton a lecture about digging deep, then the film refuses to let him dig much at all. Sinclair Daniel’s Chris is the rare horror roommate who’s funny without being a clown and resourceful without being a plot device—but by the final act, she’s relegated to “woman nearly killed so men can bond,” a thankless franchise tradition I wish someone would exorcise with extreme prejudice.
Wilson the actor remains the series’ beating, bewildered heart; he can do “earnest dad haunted by things he can’t name” in his sleep, and sometimes it feels like he is. Ty Simpkins, now a full-grown haunted teen, sells the physicality of astral terror and the weary sadness of a kid who’s been the franchise’s chew toy since primary school. Their final reconciliation—Dalton’s painting of Josh carrying him from The Further—is the one moment where the movie’s metaphor breathes. It’s genuinely sweet. It’s also five minutes inside a 107-minute reminder that sweetness is not a substitute for stakes.
As for Renai, Rose Byrne gets a mercifully short but sincere scene grounding Josh’s confusion in the canon’s memory wipes. It’s the best written passage in the film and doubles as an accidental mission statement: we made everyone forget so we could do this again. The post-credits flicker over the sealed door is a brutally honest epilogue: not just “the evil might return,” but “the IP definitely will.”
Visually, the film sticks to the Insidious playbook: noirish interiors, pale faces peeking from shadow, and The Further’s signature black fog. Occasionally, Wilson toys with new textures—an MRI machine becomes a claustrophobic corridor; a frat party is tinted with the queasy fluorescence of bad decisions—but he never pushes the aesthetic into fresh territory. It’s handsome, competent, and risk-averse, like a realtor’s brochure for a haunted condo. “Open-plan dread. Excellent schools for demons.”
Is it scary? If you’re new to the series, sure—you’ll jump, you’ll grip the armrest, you’ll glare at a closet. If you’ve ridden this ride since 2010, you’ll recognize the track layout. The film’s boldest choice is to center middle-aged regret and freshman-year angst in a multiplex haunted house; its safest choice is everything else.
And yet—because horror fans are generous and because Wilson is a likable screen presence—The Red Door is watchable. It’s the cinematic equivalent of reheated leftovers from a restaurant you used to love: you still taste what made it special, but the new microwave is doing most of the work. There are flashes—the muffled terror of an MRI, a quietly cruel photograph, Lin Shaye’s spectral cameo blessing the franchise like a benevolent aunt—that hint at the weirder, sharper movie lurking just beyond the threshold.
Final verdict: not bad enough to hate, not bold enough to adore. It’s a courteous shuffle through familiar corridors, pausing occasionally to ask how you’re doing and whether you’ve considered unresolved trauma. If the series must continue (and that post-credits nightlight says it will), here’s hoping the next chapter stops repainting the same door and builds a new room—a messier, riskier, scarier one. And maybe let Renai do more than set the table while the men talk about feelings with a demon who’s frankly overdue for a rebrand.
Until then, The Further remains open for business: your one-stop shop for liminal gloom, family secrets, and spectral customer service. Please keep your hands, feet, and originality inside the franchise at all times.
