#not 2 be a monster fucker on main but. it was rlly a sight to behold

[koinomegaluvr]

i watched insidious: the red door again with my sister, and it grew on me the second time around despite not knowing how to feel abt it initially.

At first i found the story was underdeveloped (and despite my opinions on the movie changing, i honestly still do feel this way lowkey ghgh) but like. i see exactly what they were trying to do, y’now???

i’ve always rlly enjoyed the insidious franchise, not necessarily because i found it scary, but because the concept of the further was absolutely FASCINATING to me. especially because it’s a place that’s like. an endless limbo that’s reminiscent of liminal horror (and i’m a sucker for that shit)

I rlly liked that they brought in more emotional depth & complexity for the lamberts and how they explore more of how the events of insidious: chapter 2 ultimately affected their family and each individual character.

I immensely enjoyed that they wanted to explore themes of generational trauma and repressed trauma, and how sweeping said trauma under the rug rather than trying to heal and resolve it at its root causes it to fester and ultimately harm everyone involved.

i like how they acknowledged how extremely traumatizing it must have been for renai and the kids to see parker crane josh trying to violently DESTROY them. like there ain’t no way that’s NOT going to have devastating effects on your psyche/marriage when you see what you think is your deranged looking father/husband, trying to beat y’all to death with hammers 😭😭 like i can’t imagine how that must have looked for the kids and i’m glad they explored that

i also really like how (at least in my opinion), the red faced demon and his lair is also kinda symbolic of dalton’s repressed & festering mental illness/trauma with how OBSESSED the demon is with dalton. and how he set up all those “scenes” of dalton’s past which makes him just. remember everything (and that made me feel SAUR BAD for him bc recalling that much repressed trauma would be overwhelming as fuck)

that said, i really feel like they could have executed these themes a lot better, in a way that would make a little bit more sense. during the scene with dalton and josh near the end where they’re in the further trying to close the door, dalton states that they have to stop running from the demon. and there i thought dalton and josh were going to slay the demon together once and for all, but dalton just paints over the door leaving josh in the further by himself and i was like ??????????? 😭😭😭😭 hello???

like. aside from it being a bit anticlimactic, i also don’t think it made very much sense of dalton to just paint over the door when he said they couldn’t run/ignore it anymore. i suppose in a sense, dalton painting over the door in of itself symbolizes that he is trying to break the cycle himself, but honestly? it would have made more sense imo if they somehow tried to relinquish the red face demon together, bc to me that would show that dalton and josh are finally trying to resolve their trauma together by tackling it head on, thus competing their arc more effectively.

i wish they could have introduced josh’s father a bit differently—i know the existence of josh’s dad probably wasnt planned from the beginning, so adding him in was going to be a bit clunky no matter what, but i had a hard time feeling anything at all for him as a character…..

i also wish elise had a bigger role in this rather than making a 5 second cameo at the end of the movie just for the the sake of it, especially since she is what makes insidious such an interesting franchise. but i am SO glad we got a specs and tucker cameo i genuinely teared up seeing them :,)

ANYWAY, overall, i’m quite pleased w the movie, even if certain aspects of it could have been executed better. it definitely isn’t THE BEST insidious movie. i think it had a lot of potential to be excellent. i have WAYY more thoughts abt it that i dont think i can convey in a single post but maybe i’ll talk abt them another time

also. dalton and chris my beloveds 🫰🏼🫰🏼