“Insidious,” whose fifth installment opened Friday, is a second-tier horror franchise — it’s not even the best James Wan franchise starring Patrick Wilson, which would be “The Conjuring” — with a few elite jump scares, including one of the best in the genre.
In the original in 2010, Lorraine Lambert (Barbara Hershey) is telling her son, Josh (Wilson), about a horrible dream when a red-faced demon suddenly appears behind his head.
It’s a magnificent shock because of the askew blocking, the patient misdirection of the editing and Hershey’s committed performance.
In “Insidious: The Red Door,” a grim, workmanlike effort that collapses into woo-woo nonsense, Wilson makes his directorial debut, and demonstrates he grasps the importance of that jump scare, which is sketched in charcoal on paper next to his name in the opening credits.
This prickly relationship is at the center of the movie, as dad drives his son to college.
Persons:
it’s, James Wan, Patrick Wilson, Lorraine Lambert, Barbara Hershey, Josh, Wilson, askew, Hershey’s, Lorraine, Wilson doesn’t, Dalton, Ty Simpkins