The horror saga that seeks new avenues of expression

The X-Files popularized the narrative device of the monster of the week in the nineties. In the series, the protagonists faced all sorts of threats that were resolved in each episode. Although the concept had been around for a long time, it was later fictions such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural that, with self-awareness, developed it the most. The Insidious saga unashamedly embraces this formula through a diverse chronological narrative that gives rise to multiple stories with different protagonists, maintaining as a link the iconic character of the medium (Lin Shaye) and a danger that always arises from the world of the dead: an abyss of tortured souls trapped between our reality and the next. The protagonist of Insidious: The Red Door is a single mother with a traumatic childhood (trauma is a backbone element of the saga) who not only has the ability to travel to this other world, but is also the vehicle for the entities that inhabit it to be able to leave. As in any formula, and in a franchise where all films start from a similar pattern, this new chapter, written and directed by Jacob Chase (Come Play, 2020), is more than predictable in its plot twists. However, the filmmaker includes elements of interest: on the one hand, a certain political discourse that, although timidly and hidden in the horror of sects, addresses the fallacies of populism; on the other hand, the subtext of family inheritances, inherent in the Insidious films, is treated here from a story about women who raise children alone. The proposal maintains the playful and circus-like spirit of the horrors of the whole (the dental examination sequence, for example), but insists on a tone that is too psychological, as if it wanted to unevenly mirror the excellent fictions of Mike Flanagan.

In any case, the attempt is welcome.