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Insidious: The Red Door will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on September 12 via Sony. The fifth installment in the Insidious franchise (and a direct sequel to the second entry) is currently available on Digital.

Actor Patrick Wilson makes he feature directorial debut from a script by Scott Teems (Halloween Kills, Firestarter). Wilson stars with Ty Simpkins, Sinclair Daniel, Hiam Abbass, and Rose Byrne. Blumhouse produces.

Special features are listed below.

#insidious the red door #insidious: the red door #patrick wilson #ty simpkins #rose byrne #insidious #dvd #gift #horror #sinclair daniel #hiam abbass #scott teems #lin shaye #leigh whannell #blumhouse #Youtube

The only Slasher films with a decent compelling narrative that doesn't disappoint me. Even across the different continuities.

An actual set of stories and legends that grew over time like real small town legends do.

H1, H:2018, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends.

H1, H2, (H3) - H20, H: RESURRECTION

Rob Zombie's H1 & H2

1, 2, 4, 5, 6 [those middle three (4,5,6) are weak stuff written by FT13 Writers. Although I like the cult idea.]

John Carpenter has done with one movie in 1978, what Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, Ghostface, Chucky etc couldn't. Make a sustainable guttural, slasher character with a bit more grounding than the others.

I'll probably get some debaters on it or harassment, but the other movies were "copycat killers", Carpenter/Halloween is the proto-slasher. The others were just "blah" type blood fests.

Firestarter (2022)

Directed by Keith Thomas

Cinematography by Karim Hussain

BLOGTOBER 10/14/2021: HALLOWEEN KILLS

Are my standards automatically lowered when I'm watching a slasher movie?

Maybe.

But I mean, how else am I supposed to have any fun?

Last night after I got out of David Gordon Green's HALLOWEEN KILLS—the first sequel to the second reboot, or something?—I brashly announced to social media that I thought it was the most entertaining HALLOWEEN installment since SEASON OF THE WITCH. Then, when people started responding with relief to hear that KILLS is actually decent, I fought the urge to send caveats to each person clarifying my judgment. I mean, this isn't a revolution. Characters who know they're in trouble will still investigate a dark house with nothing but a cheese knife, split up when they should stick together, and confront an unstoppable juggernaut themselves rather than call the police. But at least in this movie, where the characters commit to a community-based response, the latter point is specifically justified.

Much as 1981's HALLOWEEN II carried on directly from the end of the 1978 HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN KILLS picks up from the end of the 2018 HALLOWEEN, with Michael Myers escaping from the elaborate trap that Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, natch) spent 40 years setting for him. As we do in the first Halloween sequel, we find the battle damaged Ms. Strode in Haddonfield Memorial Hospital where, in this version, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) anxiously await news of her condition. From here, though, instead of a long slow stalk'n'slash episode inside the hospital, the fed-up people of Haddonfield organize a little mob justice. Or maybe "organize" is putting it too strongly, but it's still fair to think, "Why didn't anybody try this before?"

Willingness to experiment is the main thing that keeps HALLOWEEN KILLS afloat, which can be hard to do within the confines of its genre. The slasher is perhaps the most proscriptive of all horror subgenres, with the methodical elimination of one character after another only elevated by the inventiveness of the murders. Despite the audience's cries of "DON'T GO IN THERE!" or "DON'T DROP THE KNIFE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" or "FOR GOD'S SAKE JUST LEAVE THE HOUSE AND CALL THE COPS!", you simply couldn't ask the average slasher cast to smarten up, or else the movie might be about ten minutes long. With a slasher movie, the suspension of disbelief is different from what it is in, say, an action movie, where one accepts the superhuman athletic prowess of e.g. Tom Cruise in completing an impossible mission, in exchange for the thrill of seeing it done. The viewer of a slasher movie has to accept that characters of at-least average intelligence will make themselves absurdly vulnerable, so that we can enjoy their (hopefully) creative conclusions. Recently, when I heard FX wizard Gabe Bartalos and director-cum-mime Tom McLoughlin discussing the production of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES, it occurred to me that at its best, the slasher is not unlike a Buster Keaton movie, in which the point is to set up as many outrageous spectacles as possible, physics and narrative coherence be damned.

The kills in, er, HALLOWEEN KILLS, really are a treat, cleverly executed and convincing. Between cinematographer Michael Simmonds and editor Tim Alverson, Michael Myers is imbued with an unpredictable speed and strength that gives his antics a satisfying visceral impact. I also appreciate that while the movie has a modern feeling for diversity, all of the characters are subject to the same fate. I recently heard a rising star writer swear that she would always buck the grim tradition of making black characters into mere kindling, and while I can respect that—understanding that blackness has historically signified doom in many a horror movie—I think that instating any type of formula for the fates of certain characters can be its own kind of mistake. Not to be all "I'm not racist, I hate everyone equally!", but in a movie with a large cast like HALLOWEEN KILLS, it makes the most sense for everyone to be equally threatened, just to keep things unpredictable. The difference here is that we really like most of the characters. There is no moral quality to their deaths, in the way of punishing wayward teens, and nobody is especially "asking for it". This, the twelfth HALLOWEEN installment (?!), is loaded with great bit performances and a wide variety of colorful characters; you hate to see them go, but you love to watch them leave.

Of course, HALLOWEEN KILLS is not without its flaws. The sheer number of characters in the movie—many of them returners from other sequels, and many of them played by original cast members—prevents any real pathos from developing. No sooner do we get excited for Allyson to join a vigilante ride led by original survivor Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), then we're back in the hospital where Laurie is slowly realizing that Michael Myers is still on the street, and having a tortured debate with Karen about her responsibility in the matter. Things are further complicated when a different Smith's Grove Sanitarium escapee is mistaken for Myers, and full-on mass hysteria breaks out. This incident comes with some rhetoric about how "none of us are truly innocent", which is one of the tangled philosophical threads HALLOWEEN KILLS tries to follow. Which is sort of interesting, but also, sort of distracting.

After watching twelve of these movies, with varying degrees of engagement, I've come to think that maybe you can only do a Michael Myers story once. The entire point of interest about him is not something to be elaborated upon. He represents the void; his behavior is unexplainable, apparently unmotivated, and therefore unpredictable. What's scary about him is that he doesn't have any relationship to familiar human feelings, even revenge. Myers' version of Van Helsing, Dr. Loomis, tells us again and again in increasingly flowery terms that there is simply nothing behind Michael's eyes, and we should have listened, because the more filmmakers have tried to explain what Michael's whole deal might be, the more trouble they stir up.

"What if Laurie Strode is ACTUALLY Michael's sister?!"

"OK, then what?"

"Well, obviously he needs to kill all of his family members!"

"Why, though?"

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm..."

Mercifully, HALLOWEEN KILLS doesn't try to give us any extra context for Michael's endless rampage, but it does spiral out on a lot of rumination on whose fault this all might be, as various characters produce complicated reasons why Michael might be the most angry at them personally. I appreciate the urge to give HALLOWEEN a little more pathos than it has in its purest state, but I don't know if it works much better here than it does in 2018's somewhat anemic, unfocused attempt to explore the impact of PTSD on Laurie Strode. I can't believe I'm about to say this, and neither can you, but the only HALLOWEEN iteration that really tackles that topic in a moving and successful way is Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN II. And no, I won't take that back.

So, maybe there's a little too much going on in HALLOWEEN KILLS, and more internal debate than the story really asks for. But, it's fast-paced, fun, and fabulously violent. What more do you really want?

...Well actually, what I really wanted was to NOT be in a theater that deployed a Michael Myers guy to follow you to your seat and STARE at you. My love of horror is based in my very real feeling of being constantly threatened by life at large, so it does not extend to pranks, haunt attractions, or strangers who pretend (so I tell myself) they want to murder me. I wouldn't want to take away this dubious thrill from anybody who likes that sort of thing, but maybe instead of free Michael Myers masks (not that I'm ungrateful!), they could have handed out some of these types of things at the door instead: