Back from the dead to scare up some more dollars: Leigh Paatsch’s verdict on new Insidious movie
It’s hard to keep a horror franchise down, and the long-running Insidious comes back from the dead with The Red Door.
Leigh Paatsch
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Insidious:The Red Door (M)
Director: Patrick Wilson (feature debut)
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Rose Byrne, Andrew Astor
Rating: **1/2
A son and a father not so farther from The Further
You can bring in a team of exorcists. Heck, you can even call Ghostbusters, if you like.
However, no matter what you do, there is no way you will ever stop a horror movie franchise returning from the dead to scare up a few dollars more.
The latest case in point is Insidious, a so-so series of spookers that seemingly passed away some time last decade after four fair-to-feeble instalments.
All of a sudden, a fifth episode is now here, with a special twist that will undoubtedly please the most rusted-on Insidious fans: the Lamberts are back.
The who? The Lamberts. They were that poor family that experienced much harassment by haunting in the first two Insidious flicks before mercifully being dragged to the bench.
Now they are back in the game via Insidious: The Red Door, and it should come as no surprise that the Lamberts have continued to live unhappily ever after since we last saw them.
Parents Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) are now divorced, though they remain in touch for the sake of their two teenage sons, Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and Foster (Andrew Astor).
In case you have forgotten – or a latecomer to the Insidious universe – there are plenty of short, medium-length and extended flashbacks included to re-establish the concept of The Further, one of those gnarly parallel realms where the lights are always off and a smoke machine is always on.
Once upon a time, Josh and Dalton shared the unwanted gift of selective astral projection, which inevitably made them the targets of demonic beings deep inside The Further. The only ticket out of this misery for father and son back in the day was to have their memories erased, and start over as if nothing ever happened.
But now Dalton is starting college, and he is getting hit with a ton of choppy, croppy flashbacks that is making him more of a moody, broody dude than he already is.
As for Josh, he’s getting knocked around by the same sort of vicious visions, all of which are accelerating a possibly dire health condition.
And just to cap it all off, Josh and Dalton are not exactly getting along all that well. In fact, they barely speak. And when they do, their harsh words barely address the phenomena that points to The Further drawing ever closer.
To be frank, Insidious: The Red Door is neither all that good, nor all that bad.
It is perfectly, precisely average in all departments, from the inconsistent calibre of the acting (Wilson and Simpkins only faintly click as a father and son) to the innocuous nature of the jolt-scare scenes (which fade from the memory very quickly aside from one shock encounter inside an MRI machine).
Insidious: The Red Door is in cinemas now
JOY RIDE (MA15+)
***
General release
While the movie comedy may not exactly be a dying art form, it is a diminished one. In an era where a single mishandled joke can get you cancelled, performers and writers alike are double and triple-checking their every move before attempting to get a chuckle.
Therefore, the unapologetically profane and intermittently very amusing new comedy Joy Ride comes as a complete shock to the system. This is one movie comedy that couldn’t care less about stepping over any lines of political correctness.
In fact, this filthy-minded, potty-mouthed tale of four Asian-American female friends wreaking heavy breathing havoc across mainland China and South Korea polevaults across those lines with admirably deranged glee.
While not all of the movie is as funny as it thinks it is, there are at least six individual sequences where the waves of laughter crash hard, fast and furiously. If you miss this at cinemas, do make a point of finding it later on the streaming platforms, as there is some very good stuff occasionally happening here. Stars Ashley Park (Emily in Paris) and Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once).
FLEABAG: NT LIVE (M)
****1/2
Selected cinemas
In 2018, multi-gifted writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge completed a final run of Fleabag, the one-woman stage show from 2013 which forged her now-impeccable reputation. The production swiftly became the hottest ticket in London and on Broadway, and not just because of the global popularity of the hit TV series of the same name.
The real reason Fleabag became a sellout sensation is the near-miraculous performance of Waller-Bridge, who emphatically commands the stage for almost two hours armed with nothing more than a single chair. In this mesmerising live recording of the production, Waller-Bridge’s vocal delivery of this spoken-word masterpiece is nothing short of breathtaking. So too is her expressive range, which will take you to places never visited by the wonderful TV version.
A comic and dramatic tour de force that will break your heart and make your day, over and over again. Only here for one week, so get your skates on!
Originally published as Back from the dead to scare up some more dollars: Leigh Paatsch’s verdict on new Insidious movie
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