Now in its fifth installment across more than a decade with The Red Door, the Insidious franchise boasts an impressive longevity, albeit in a way more damning than damned. The big horror series prolong their popularity on the strength of a monster (Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers and the rest of the Halloween costume perennials) or a narrative device (the self-inflicted torture of Saw, the Rube Goldberg inevitability of fate in Final Destination), but the Insidious pictures have yielded four windfalls over $100m despite a lack of any distinctive features. The unifying premise for hit factory Blumhouse’s reliable yet reliably uninteresting moneymaker dares viewers to wonder “what if there was a creepy thing that jumped out at you, then disappeared?” The closest it gets to a recurring mascot is a Darth Maul-looking phantom alternately referred to by fans as The Man With Fire in His Face, Lipstick-Face Demon, The Red-Faced Demon, or Sixtass, and in any case, he’s pretty light on charisma.
The first few chapters benefited hugely from the steady directorial hands of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, genre guys with strong fundamentals who knew how to use the camera to coax every iota of tension from material unremarkable on paper. This time around, the star Patrick Wilson takes the reins and reveals just how little has held the property together up to this point. Without innovative blocking and framing, each scene follows a rote repetition as clichés of studio-horror storytelling cue up the oldest scares in the book. Some lumpy mumbling about repression and cycles of generational trauma, a figure appears out of focus in the background, a moment of silence to foster a false sense of security, and then the cinematic equivalent of grabbing someone’s shoulders and screaming “BOO!” in their ear. If these cheap tricks garner a reaction at all, it’s to their suddenness and loudness, a knee-jerk agitation nowhere near as affecting as true, unleaded terror.
