Insidious: The Red Door takes a purposeful path with spotty execution, building around father-son tension and making the horror a metaphor for family trauma. The acting adds layers, chemistry, outbursts, vulnerability, and levity. Still, the film becomes stagnant because its emotional conflict is quickly established and has nowhere to go until the conclusion. There's weak dialogue, mediocre characters, unclear supernatural elements, a clunky climax, and excessive repetition. The arcs are nice yet their allegory feels a bit forced. Slow burns are great but require significant substance to fill themselves out. Overall, The Red Door's honorable effort works better in theory.
Technically, The Red Door loses steam. The cast is overstuffed with bystanders. Its production design is indistinct. The music tries too hard. Its cinematography has movement, composition, lighting, and focus, but is often drab. The editing uses cross cuts, jump cuts, smash inserts, and pacing bursts, yet becomes dull as the momentum evaporates. Its effects have solid makeup but rely a bit too much on CGI. Only the sound is consistently above average, providing split cuts, echoes, muffling, stings, distortions, smash cuts, risers, atmosphere, and symbolism. Ultimately, The Red Door has moderate craft and reaches for genuine emotions, but fails to become anything more.
Writing: 5/10
Direction: 5/10
Cinematography: 6/10
Acting: 7/10
Editing: 6/10
Sound: 8/10
Score/Soundtrack: 5/10
Production Design: 5/10
Casting: 5/10
Effects: 6/10
Overall Score: 5.8/10
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