Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

If watching Insidious: The Red Door has helped me fix a major blind spot then it was all worthwhile. I was setting up my review template for this (which is when I usually double-check cast and crew names) when I realised that I had been mis-spelling Leigh Whannell’s name for over a decade. Over a decade. Please, I implore you, if you ever read anything from me that contains such a constant error, please let me know. Sometimes the brain tricks you into thinking you are spelling things correctly, which can create the habit of a long-standing error. This long-standing error has now been corrected, with me editing every one of my online reviews that I could still access, after seeing Insidious: The Red Door. Which probably means that I got more from this film than most people.

I really enjoyed Insidious. While many people were underwhelmed by it, and quite a few were in a rush to refer to the main demonic figure as Darth Maul, I thought it was an excellent horror movie with some perfectly-executed scares. Despite the ups and downs of the series, it stays just ahead of The Conjuring movies, and is helped by not having to be beholden to central characters we know were actually viewed by many others as self-serving fraudsters. If Insidious: The Red Door is the last in the series then it is a very disappointing end, but I would prefer the series to end here than to try and limp through another instalment or two.

Everyone returns to their main roles, but the focus of the film is on the strained father and son relationship between Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins). Having had their most traumatic life experience wiped from their minds, there seems to be something else missing between them. Josh and Renai (Rose Byrne) have separated, and Dalton is leaving the nest aka heading to university. Go figure, something happens that triggers something in the mind of Dalton, leading him on a path to remember his past and face his demons. Literally. Helped on his journey by a new female friend (Chris Winslow, played by Sinclair Daniel), Dalton soon realises that he is in a lot of danger . . . and he might have to reconnect with his father to find a way back to something resembling a more normal, and much safer, life.

Written by Scott Teems, continuing song the path set out a long time ago by Leigh Whannell, Insidious: The Red Door is just about as redundant as movies get. There’s nothing new here, nothing to care about, and no  decent scares. As well as reprising his onscreen role, Wilson has been allowed to direct this, and it feels like a way to thank him for being part of two hugely successful modern horror movie franchises. That’s all well and good, but perhaps studios could just send him a wine subscription next time. Although competent, Wilson shows that he knows the basics of film-making without having noted the ways in which geography and set-ups are worked together to craft the best scares. The best moments here are, dare I say it, Wan-esque, but they are slightly mishandled in a way that makes you wish you were watching one of the earlier films in this series.

As for the acting, Wilson and Simpkins are both fine, and Byrne does what is required of her, but the only person to really stand out is Daniel, who provides a much-needed shot in the arm to the film, which would otherwise have been full of scenes showing one young man being glum, an older man being glum, and sometimes the two of them being glum together. 

Nobody is helped by the script, with Teems seeming far too nervous to stray from the central path that should lead to the end of the series, but the pacing and infrequent moments of humour help to make it more bearable than it could have been. Despite bringing to mind more memorable moments, callbacks to the first film generally work well, and there’s a middle section that allows Simpkins and Daniel to almost have some fun before everything descends further into darkness and peril.

It’s not good, but it’s not exactly awful either. I doubt I will remember it by next month though, and I certainly won’t want to ever revisit it.

5/10

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Firestarter (2022)

As much as I have enjoyed his work over the years, Stephen King is very hit and miss when it comes to his work. Anyone so prolific is going to be. And filmed adaptations of his work have been even more hit and miss. Yes, we got The Shining, Carrie, and the likes of Stand By Me. But we also got The Mangler and The Langoliers (which I mention here as an oft-cited example, despite my own affection for it). Firestarter was originally adapted for the screen back in 1984, and most people would agree that it was an imperfect little film, at best. Drew Barrymore did well in the lead role, David Keith was great, but it couldn't do justice to a story that wasn't the strongest in the first place. And George C. Scott is, well, interesting to watch. This is all my way of saying that, yes, Firestarter was something that was arguably worth having another shot at. I'm not sure this end result was really the way to go though, especially as it is hampered while trying to stick so closely to the source material.

Directed by Keith Thomas, who made a strong impression on many people with his horror feature debut, The Vigil, this casts Ryan Kiera Armstrong in the important central role, the pyrokinetic Charlie McGee, and Zac Efron and Sydney Lemmon as her parents, both trying to protect Charlie from anyone taking an interest in her powers while also trying to protect themselves from any temperature-raising accidents. There's definitely interest from a Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben), who has permitted an "agent" named Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) to hunt down the family and take possession of Charlie.

Written by Scott Teems, Firestarter is a film that is completely competent, and improves on the original in a couple of ways (not least of which is replacing Scott with Greyeyes). It somehow lacks part of the goofy charm of the original though, which also had room in the cast for Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen, Louise Fletcher, and Art Carney (his role played in this adaptation by the excellent John Beasley). Maybe it’s because it cannot replicate just that image of Barrymore looking moody as her hair is blown around and flames start to develop, an image so brilliantly spoofed by Barrymore herself in a wonderfully memorable SNL skit. Or maybe it is because Teems was so set on a faithful adaptation that he didn’t feel as if he could try anything that might improve things further. This is a safe horror movie. I cannot think of anyone who would outright hate it, but I also cannot think of anyone who might end up loving it. The opening third has all of the best moments, and then it just slides down and down from there.

Armstrong is good in the role of Charlie, and she does well with the necessary “look sternly at things until it starts to heat up” expressions. Efron also does well, and gets to have a couple of good moments using his own skill to "push" people, something that is inevitably causing him a bit more damage every time he does it. Lemmon isn't necessarily bad, but she's given the least to do from the main cast members. Greyeyes is a formidable hunter, Reuben does well as the standard head of operations who gravely underestimates the situation, Kurtwood Smith is as good as ever in his small role, and I've already intimated how good Beasley is.

I'll be very surprised if many people can remember this film once the end credits have rolled. Thomas directs in line with the script, safely and competently, and nobody involved gets to put any strong fingerprints on the material, including King. Anyone somehow unaware of the original, novel or film, would probably watch this and think of it as a pale imitation of something that King would come up with. There's no energy to it, no real feeling of people living their lives in this world. No . . . spark.

Maybe someone else will have a go at this material in 30-40 years. Meanwhile, there are many other movies riffing on this kind of thing that are easier to recommend than this, and I would suggest films as varied as Brightburn, Freaks, and Looper for starters.

5/10

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Halloween Kills (2021)

Here's a bit of a shocker. I wasn't a big fan of Halloween (2018). Despite my problems with it, however, it was impossible for me to deny that it was an attempt to set right a franchise that had so often gone off into choppy waters, to put it mildly. Halloween Kills is worse than the film that preceded it. The big surprise is that I think it is arguably worse than every film that preceded it. 

Following on immediately from the end of the previous film, Halloween Kills is the tale of Michael Myers getting out of a burning house and killing a whole load of people on his way to wherever he may want to be heading. Is that wherever Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is? Is it his childhood home? Is it somewhere he can face off against an angry mob who rally around the chant that "evil dies tonight"? Wherever it is, events are interrupted by numerous flashbacks to scenes that show the aftermath of that fateful night all those years ago. The night he came home.

David Gordon Green is back in the director's chair again, and he co-wrote the script with Danny McBride and Scott Teems (the former also returning to the same role he had on the last film). So let me start by saying what this film gets right. Entertaining scenes of mayhem and death. This feels like the Halloween movie with the biggest bodycount yet, and the kills have a decent mix of variety and brutality. Michael Myers is as unstoppable as ever when he's all revved up for a major killing spree. 

The other thing the film gets right is the score, making plenty use of classic music cues in the right places.

That's it. That's all this movie gets right, and that's why it manages to do what I thought was impossible, become a new low point for the series.

Now let's go through the many things that the film gets wrong. 

The cast. They're either not that good (Andi Matichak still fails to make much of an impression as young Allyson, granddaughter of the legend that is Laurie Strode), unceremoniously sidelined because they need to be held back for the next - final - instalment (Jamie Lee Curtis), or forced to make one bad decision after another on the way to an ending that treats them as badly as any minor supporting character. This applies to Judy Greer, Robert Longstreet, and Anthony Michael Hall, among others. The fact that Hall is playing Tommy Doyle, joined here by Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards reprising her role), makes the misuse of his character arguably more egregious than the misuse of any other characters.

The many nods to other movies that everyone wants to pretend doesn't exist in this timeline. This has been a pet peeve of mine before, but it's even worse this time when so many details seem to have been included for fans to point out as nods to previous visits to Haddonfield.

Leading on from the previous point, there is almost no scene in Halloween Kills that doesn't highlight either some dialogue, character, or scene from the 1978 movie. It makes up what feels like the majority of the runtime, and it's bloody infuriating. This is a film that shows a flashback of Michael Myers clambering over a car just to allow the film-makers to feel smug when they show a near-identical shot of Michael Myers clambering over a car. There is a big difference between dropping in references to please fans and making your film little more than a collage of those references.

The many scenes that are supposed to show the events of Haddonfield in the 1970s generally look well, but they are a) totally unnecessary, and b) full of choices made by people who wanted to recreate certain moments and characters without considering whether or not they should. This leads to intrusive camerawork and some terrible audio that can take viewers out of the movie.

Any commentary on trauma and mob mentality is undermined by the weak script. Why bring so many characters back if you’re only going to use them to make the same mistakes that everyone makes in these movies? They even mistake someone else for Michael Myers, which I think it the third or fourth time that idea has been used in these movies. There are individual moments that have characters showing how affected they have been by the night that terrified the entire town, but they are disappointingly brief. And none of the mob mentality stuff works, with no real feeling of “angry villagers with torches” ever coming close to actually causing a problem for the monster they want to drive away.

Halloween Kills has worked for a hell of a lot of people, and it seems to have been a big hit at the box office already, so you may end up at the opposite end of the spectrum from me. Some people have heard the film criticised and wondered what viewers were expecting. I’ll tell you. All this had to do was be true to the characters, true to the idea of making it a worthwhile story branching directly from the events of the original movie, and full of good kills. At least the kills are good. 

Sadly, any other film in the series manages to do what it sets out to do better than this, which even keeps our favourite scream queen so far away from most main scenes that it’s akin to watching a cut of Aliens re-edited to keep Ripley in stasis for most of the runtime.

Worst. Halloween. Ever. (so far)

4/10

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