Film Journal 2023: Insidious: The Red Door

Film Journal 2023: Insidious: The Red Door
Directed by Patrick Wilson

Prior to the release of The Red Door the only film from the franchise I had seen was the first one. So I decided to do a marathon over the last two days, culminating of course with the latest entry.

If someone had told me I would be this invested in the series on an emotional level when it was all said and done I likely would have offered a skeptical smirk in response. In fact, I didnt realize how much I was until I saw The Red Door. Dang did it sneak up on me in some unexpected ways. Of the series I found the third one to the be the weakest, while the fourth one demonstrated a return to form, providing what I found to be a satisfying conclusion to the overall journey. I fully expected The next entry to explore new territory and new characters and new stories. Instead I got the conclusion to the franchise I never knew I needed.

This series is built on patterns. Patterns that repeat themselves. It’s how each of the entries find themselves bound to the other. Cyclical patterns that not only connect the films but generations. The first tells the story of a family dealing with the trauma of their sons ability to connect to the other world. The second looks backwarda and explores how this trauma started with the father before continuing in the life of the son. The third fills in the gaps by fleshing out the story of Elise, the one who’s life intersects with this family through both the experiences of father and son. The fourth uses the fleshed out story of Elise to recenter us on this family, pushing us backwards yet again into another generational line while bringing the whole thing full circle in a poetic fashion.

In the Red Door we do jump forward into new territory, only not into fresh stories but into the necessary confronting of this generational trauma in the hope of finally breaking the cycle that has marked all the other films beginning and end. In this sense it becomes a powerful presence in terms of the franchises thematic and spiritual voice. For anyone who has dealt with such generational cycles and bounded, rooted trauma in their own life, this film offers a way to visualize it and make sense of it, and to even find freedom from it. Beautiful, poignant, and unexpectedly emotional, the Red Door does some of the strongest and most substantive work of the series, proving that the larger story is more than just its series of frights and jump scares. It’s a visionary exercise with a very real payoff.