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Insidious 5: The Red Door is technical the sequel to Insidious and Insidious Chapter 2, since Insidious Chapter 3 and Insidious 4: The Last Key 4 were prequels. I have seen them all, but had completely forgotten what happened because these movies go in one eye and out the other.
Hence, when this one began with Lorraine’s funeral, I had completely forgotten who Lorraine was. Well, she was the mother of Josh Lambert, played by Patrick Wilson (Moonfall), who also directs this latest entry, and since he’s in these, I kept thinking there was a link between this and all the ‘Conjuring Universe‘ movies, but that is an entirely separate thing, even though Wilson is exactly the same in everything, except that sometimes he has stubble, and at other times, he’s clean-shaven. That is his entire acting range.
For want of a plot, ten years on after the events about ‘The Further’ (which I’d completely forgotten about), Josh has to take his son to college as he’s moving away, but things don’t go to plan early on, as Dalton (Ty Simpkins – The Whale) ends up staying in a dorm with a female student, Chris (Sinclair Daniel), but this is merely a plot device to bring her into his story.
Dalton’s in an art class with a very demanding teacher, and soon finds himself drawing a door with red blood spilling out of it. As such, this will lead to all sorts of shenanigans I don’t want to spoil, because if I had to endure it, so will you.
Meanwhile, Josh goes for an MRI, although I’ve had three of those, and apart from the headphones they put on to mask the thumping drone of the machine, there are no EKG patches applied to his chest, nor an implement to put dye into you for an Angiography. Also, he also falls asleep at one point for 15 minutes, but that wouldn’t happen in reality, because at mine, I was instructed to hold my breath from time to time, for the purposes of the procedure, so if you did happen to nod off, they’d soon wake up you. Plus my procedure lasted 90 mins, not the brief time his appeared to.
There is a reason to why all this is happening, but all this leads to is a typical case of a film with things going bump in the night, except every few minutes, and a 107 minute experience which is just utter gibberish.
In fact, I sometimes wonder how these films end up with a finished script at all. It reminds me of the game we used to play at school, known as both “picture consequences” and “exquisite corpse”.
Basically, you and others in your class would take it in turns to draw portions of a body, i.e. head, torso, legs and feet, but after each turn, you’d fold the paper over so that no-one else could see what you’d drawn. By the end, you all look at the finished product and wonder “What the hell is that?!”
And that’s how an Insidious movie script is created!
That said, they’re extremely successful. They cost a mere fistful of dollars (well, $16m for this one, which is expensive by comparison to the others) and after two weeks in the cinema and all the time in the world on streaming platforms, rake in almost $200m!
And of course, Lin Shaye is brought back in as Elise Rainier, at one point because she’s the most popular thing about these films – hence the prequels, but I won’t say how she pops up, here.
There is also a very brief post-credits scene:
Insidious 5: The Red Door is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 107 minutes
Release date: July 7th 2023
Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Format: 2.39:1
Cinema: Cineworld Didsbury
Rating: 3/10
Director: Patrick Wilson
Producers: Jason Blum, Oren Peli, James Wan, Leigh Whannell
Screenplay: Scott Teems
Story: Leigh Whannell
Music: Joseph Bishara
Cast:
Dalton Lambert: Ty Simpkins
Josh Lambert: Patrick Wilson
Renai Lambert: Rose Byrne
Chris Winslow: Sinclair Daniel
Professor Armagan: Hiam Abbass
Foster Lambert: Andrew Astor
Kali Lambert: Juliana Davies
Carl: Steve Coulter
Nick the Dick: Peter Dager
Alec Anderson: Justin Sturgis
Lipstick Demon: Joseph Bishara
Smash Face / Ben Burton: David Call
Sick Kid: Stephen Gray
Supervisor Robbins: Robin S Walker
Specs: Leigh Whannell
Tucker: Angus Sampson
Elise Rainier: Lin Shaye
Sorority Girl #1: Bridget Kim
Paige: Logan Wilson
Young Dalton / Young Josh: Kasjan Wilson
Mourner: Mary Frances Looram
Dr. Bower: E Roger Mitchell
Priest: Dagmara Dominczyk (voice)
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.