Floppy Haired Emo Horror

The horror-fest continues! We had an interesting double bill: Insidious: The Red Door (2022) and Suitable Flesh (2023).

I:TRD is the fifth Insidious movie, and it is suppposed to be the final entry (until the next one). It goes back to the story of Patrick Wilson and his son. It starts with them being hypnotized to forget the trauma of those movies, and the whole Further thing. It catches up with the family ten years later, at the funeral for Wilson's mom. He is divorced Rose Byrne, and his son has grown up to be Ty Simpkins, an emo arty type going to college in the next week. He and Wilson don't get along, mostly because Wilson has been physically absent and mentally vacant for a long time. But he does drive him to college.

At college, Wilson encourages his son to join a frat, and finds out that he has been assigned a black woman roommate, a goofy math major played by Sinclair Daniel. She's fun. 

Simpkins' art classes are pretty intense, with cult-leader type Hiam Abbass presiding. To get them to dig deep for creativity, she uses something like a hypnotic induction, which causes him to see and paint "The Red Door", which he must close. To get him to lighten up, Daniel drags him to the frat party, which is pretty funny. It includes frat president Nick the Prick in a diaper talking about letting men be men, excessive drinking etc. After agreeing this is lame, Daniel gets him to go upstairs to look through everyone's shit. But in one room, Simpkins sees a puking ghost, probably of a student who died in the frat from alcohol poisoning. 

So we have Simpkins seeing ghosts, astral projecting (on purpose), and having visions of the ghost world intruding on daily life (while also goofing around with Daniel). Meanwhile, Wilson is only trying to figure out his problems a little bit. He does look up a YouTube made by Specs and Tucker introducing Elise (the best part of these movies, killed off too soon). That's it for them.

It wasn't very good, although I did like Daniel. The only sane one in the movie, I guess. But note the following: floppy haired emo boy, astral projection, hypnotism...

It starts in the psychiatric ward of Miskatonic University. Barbara Crampton is visiting Heather Graham, who is confined to a padded cell. She seems to have killed someone, mangled him beyond recognition. But Crampton is a friend, and wants to know the story...

Graham was a psychiatrist, happy with her life. (By the way, she wrote a book on astral projection.) One day, a young man comes in, shaking with fear. Now, we were positive this was Ty Simpkins, but it turns out he is just the same type (floppy haired emo) and actually Judah Lewis. It turns out he is afraid that his father is trying to take over his life. Graham treats this as a normal abuse situation, but then Lewis gets a call from his father. He has some kind of seizure, and comes to with a completely diffferent personality. He's no longer afraid, cocky and sarcastic. He just leaves.

Graham goes home to her handsome, concerned husband, Jonathan Schaech. That night, when they make love, she imagines he is Lewis. This gets deep under her skin, and she goes to his address, where she finds Lewis' father, Bruce Davidson. He's a gross, very sick man, who almost dies in front of her until she puts his pills in his mouth. 

The next time she meets Lewis, he brings her home and tries to convince her to help him kill Davidson. The deal is, if he chants a spell, it causes a body swap. The third time her does this to you, it's permanent. He wants Lewis' young, healthy body. Lewis wants to kill him, and destroy his brain to stop this. But before he can, there is another body swap. Since Graham still doesn't get it, Lewis (with his father's mind in his body) manages to seduce her. During sex, he swaps bodies with her, and then back.

It gets wilder from there. 

Director Joe Lynch based the movie on an H.P Lovecraft story, and also on the schlocky movies Stuart Gordon made in the 80s. These were also based on Lovecraft, and starred Crampton. Since I haven't seen them, I don't know how close they are. But it was definitely creepy, gory and sexy - maybe a little too much sexy for my taste. But overall, a good horror. And it was fun seeing the modern Miskatonic U. campus.

But it was funny getting two movies, very different, with so many points of congruence. What a coincidence. OR WAS IT?