Recently, the Insidious and Conjuring scream king Patrick Wilson got the chance to sit in the director’s chair to direct the latest and potentially final Insidious film for the big screen, Insidious: The Red Door. As I wrote in that review, this series is the “lower-budgeted and less revered film series sibling” to The Conjuring, but it has a passionate fan base that always makes these films successful in movie theaters around the world. I quite liked Wilson’s film, but how does it compare to the other films in the franchise? Well, let’s have a look.
Patrick Wilson in Screen Gems’ INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR.
Directed by Patrick Wilson — Screenplay by Scott Teems — Story by Leigh Whannell and Scott Teems.
Insidious is just one of several horror film franchises kickstarted by modern horror icons James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Eventually, both Wan and Whannell have had to pass the director’s chair off to someone else whose job it is to not just continue the style of previous entries in these series but also someone careful and considerate enough to shepherd the values of the franchise. With 2018’s Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth film in the franchise, Wan and Whannell (who has a screenwriting credit on the film) passed the director’s chair to Adam Robitel, whose Insidious film was the second prequel film in the series, as well as the second prequel film in a row to abandon the Lambert family haunting in favor of focusing on the paranormal investigators and the psychic introduced in the first two films. But eventually, the Lambert family haunting narrative that Wan and Whannell made us so invested in with Insidious Chapters 1 and 2 (released in 2010 and 2013, respectively) had to continue. That’s where scream king and star of the original two films, Patrick Wilson, comes in — because he wasn’t just convinced to return in a significant role for the fifth and potentially final film, he also signed on for it to be his feature directorial debut.
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I'm Jeffrey Rex 