CinemaSerf (July 22, 2023)

"Dalton" (a competent effort from Ty Simpkins) and his dad "Josh" (Patrick Wilson) have a strained relationship as they come to terms with recent family upheaval and that pressure is beginning to unravel the hypnotism that is protecting them from even more ghastly memories from nine years ago. At college, he quickly befriends the quirky and outgoing girl "Chris" (an overpowering Sinclair Daniel), who is wrongly assigned to be his room-mate. Before long the pair are mired in a series of mysteries that seem to emanate from his imagination - a comatose state sets in and another dimension - and it's perils - arrives to terrorise the family via an ominous looking painting that he has instinctively created and hung on the wall. Can they unite, put their differences behind them and rally to defeat their nemesis and close the portal for ever? Well, sadly I didn't really care. This is really just a revamp of the first "Insidious" (2010) film with some added teenage angst, familial discord and little enough by way of contributions from the other siblings to give any depth to this routine father and son drama that save for the slightly livelier denouement was really rather predictable and dull. There are a few jump moments mid-way through the drama, but for the rest of it it seems that Wilson was perhaps too preoccupied with both of his roles here to focus properly on either, and that leaves us with a rather unremarkable muddle of a film that I'm afraid is just instantly forgettable.