Movie, TV series, and book reviews; personal memories; political and social commentary; mental health wisdom; spiritual and philosophical musings; my own creative endeavors, such as drawings and paintings.
As the old saying goes, “All good things must come to an end.” That is certainly true with the INSIDIOUS series. INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR (2023) is a let down within an otherwise excellent set of screenplays. I was not surprised to find that someone else other than Leigh Whannell wrote the rather weak script for this movie. The first half hour or so is good and intriguing, but then the narrative loses focus and sincerity. Unlike what all of the earlier films managed to avoid doing, this one resorts to some gratuitous, sensationalistic imagery, and of a very gross kind involving vomit. There are several under explained and underdeveloped moments, leaving a sense of superficialness and lack of clarity throughout. Even all of the different demon imagery seems gimmicky and mostly pointless.
The main characters from the first two movies, the Lamberts, return in INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR, nine years later, to engage in resolving what seems like a somewhat contrived set of issues/plot line. This comes across as simply for the sake of making another movie to eke out more profit from the INSIDIOUS franchise. Even the African American female friend/love interest (played by Sinclair Daniel) for the young lead, Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins), comes across as annoyingly pat and an obvious effort by the writer and producers to check something off on their “PC List.” I’m all for doing this in principle as long as the actual practice comes across as natural and believable rather than forced, which it does here. The chemistry between the two characters, who meet in college (where a lot of the story takes place), felt nonexistent to me.
I grow weary of movie franchises going further than they need to, but doing so anyway for the sake of the almighty dollar and nothing else. The fourth chapter, INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY (2018), is great and a sufficient way to end the series on a high note. Following that well written and acted production, this hopefully final— but, sadly, very likely not— fifth installment is like thrown together week old leftovers that should never have been served up for consumption.
The first three INSIDIOUS movies, INSIDIOUS (2010), INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 (2013), and INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 (2015) are excellent, all effectively eerie and creepy, with the first two using an economy of demonic imagery compared to a heavier, more sensationalistic use of such evil beings throughout THE CONJURING series. While CHAPTER 3 eventually leads to having more scenes with a particularly ugly demon, these come across as relevant to the story and troubled mental state of one of the main characters, a teenaged female (Stefanie Scott) rendered vulnerable to a demonic spirit attachment after the death of her mother and then nearly dying from being hit by a car. In a nutshell, these screenplays are about astral travel and encountering demon spirits and very disturbed human ghosts while doing so. INSIDIOUS ends on a cliffhanger, with INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 picking right up where its prequel left off.
The first two movies cover the travails of the Lambert family, comprising a husband and wife (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne), their three children (Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor, and Brynn and Madison Bowie taking turns playing the infant daughter), and the husband’s mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey). The oldest child, Dalton (Simpkins), has the ability to astral travel while sleeping, which, during the first film, results in him entering a comatose-like state for three months as his astral body wanders about, stuck in the astral/spirit plane, referred to here as the “Further.” Lorraine enlists the help of her old friend Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), who is a seasoned psychic medium and expert astral traveler. From there, the true work begins to retrieve Dalton’s astral body and reunite it with his physical one, and to detach Dalton from a malevolent ghost that haunts him and his family, even after they move into another home. The second screenplay focuses on Dalton’s father, Josh (Wilson), becoming strangely troubled due to certain happenings in INSIDIOUS.
In all three of these films, the emphasis on closeups of actors’ facial reactions, mysterious physical disturbances in houses and other buildings, and brief startle moments of demons and disturbed ghosts suddenly appearing make each screenplay suspenseful, riveting, and poignant. Again, to me, these are all better than the more special effects-filled and campy THE CONJURING movies.
This third installment, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3, is a prequel to the first two. I appreciate how Elise (powerfully played by Lin Shaye), a woman in her sixties, is the actual heroine here and in the fourth movie, INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY (2018), which I review separately in a blog post following this one. She is understandably conflicted with fear and grief, which eventually gets explained in the third and fourth films. However, Elise is also kick ass in her role of facing off ugly demons and mean ghosts who haunt the living. She is particularly showcased in CHAPTER 3 and in THE LAST KEY, which I found refreshing and satisfying, since older women tend to often be sidelined in this and other movie genres, their own personal stories rendered less important than those of other, younger characters.
These first three screenplays are all emotionally moving, as is the fourth one, which is often even more so, I found. Two young men (Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson) play a relievingly comical duo of nerdy, geeky ghost hunters in each of the productions, teaming up with Elise for the first time in CHAPTER 3, the backstory of this plot thread presented both amusingly and sweetly. The trio make for quirky, likable characters as they help people communicate with their dead loved ones and become energetically, emotionally unattached from demons or malevolent ghosts from the astral and spirit realm (the Further). The immediacy and thoughtfulness conveyed through actor and writer Leigh Whannell’s script writing and the entire cast’s solid acting make for high quality on-screen horror that often had me thinking how astral travel and coming upon ghosts and demons could all really happen.
I just finished watching THE CONJURING series as it has been completed thus far, the most recent movie at this writing being THE NUN 2 (2023). Demonic Catholic nuns don’t exactly fascinate me the way demonic dolls do, the latter being the main theme in the three ANNABELLE movies in this franchise: ANNABELLE, ANNABELLE: CREATION, and ANNABELLE COMES HOME. (For my review of the ANNABELLE movies, I mainly just reviewed the third one, which you can read here: https://practicalpagan.blog/2024/05/19/mini-movie-review-annabelle-comes-home-2019/). But, they can be equally as creepy as, say, some clowns. (My apologies to nuns in general, the vast majority of them being not at all demonic, of course.) THE NUN 2 was a little better than THE NUN (2018). I enjoyed the intrigue and haunted school setting in 1956 France. Gothic supernatural horror is often interesting to me. Like its prequel, this movie has a dramatic, clunky climax, which is formulaic and rather pat. But, some of the cinematography is pretty in both productions. And I enjoy seeing ancient architecture and old paintings. A certain brief portrayal of a demon was particularly creepy and fascinating in THE NUN 2. As both of these movies progress, the increasing amount of demonic imagery makes them less scary and more sensationalistic, especially in the first of the two. This results in more campy, spectacle-filled fun, but less eerie and suspenseful atmosphere. The sequel seemed to maintain having more creepy, suspenseful scenes compared to the earlier film. All fun stuff, not to be taken seriously.
The first movie in the series, THE CONJURING (2013) is quite eerie and intriguing, less over-the-top campy than its sequels, THE CONJURING 2 (2016) and THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (2021). It’s a pretty good screenplay overall, even though very Catholic and Christian oriented, which the entire series very much is. All three of these particular productions focus on a real life couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, helping people to exorcise a demon, or a demonically possessed ghost (this being the case in the first two), out of someone. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are excellent in their portrayals as each of these main characters, with an extra nod to Ms. Farmiga. Her role as that of a psychic medium is especially emotionally demanding and compelling.
I’ve long been fascinated by the clearing away of energetic, including spirit, attachments that occur in people. I’m personally more interested in non-Christian oriented methods, such as shamanic ones, derived from ancient and current indigenous cultures, none of which were originally Christian, and most not being otherwise Abrahamic either. I have an elder colleague, who, while himself identifying as Christian, does spirit and energy clearings for people from what he calls a “psychopomp” approach, which is shamanic. These methods are more gentle than exorcism, but are also persistent and effective.
After watching THE CONJURING movies, most of them based somewhat on several actual events, I’m reminded that there is a rightful place for exorcism practices. I’m just left with curiosity about the non-Christian ones. A crucial aspect of any exorcism, or spirit attachment release in general, is to have a well-developed, confident warrior and healer mentality, backed up with/built upon a strong spiritual system. Being a good psychotherapist ultimately requires these as well. This is at least what I’ve personally come to understand as a mental health professional over the past twenty-five years.
The binary/polarity metaphysics of demons and their supreme leader, the Devil, on one side and God and Jesus Christ on the other are the focus in these CONJURING movies. The series has a feel of Catholic propaganda, yet admittedly all six movies I’ve seen each comprise good, intriguing story-telling. Perhaps, someday, there will be more screenplays written and produced about non-Christian approaches to resolving cases of what is most commonly known as demonic possession. Demons, as I understand them, are chaotic and harmful nonhuman spirits that occur in nature, best left alone and not interacted with. They are different from plant and tree spirits, which are comparatively more neutral in morality and behavior. There is much more nuance and assorted details to the metaphysics of spirits, including demons, and their strata in the universe than what I can say here. Whole books have been written about this large topic of the occult.
Needless to say, the CONJURING movies are entertaining and thought-provoking. I just started watching the INSIDIOUS series. The supernatural has always intrigued me. Some would say “supernatural” is a misleading term, as all such phenomena given that label are simply of another domain of existence in a complex universe of energy and subatomic particles, thus ultimately being natural/occurring in nature.
The Practical, Fanciful Pagan 