cafenowhere

The other night I noticed that Netflix has Insidious: The Red Door available and I'm still searching for horror movies, so I considered watching it. The only thing was, I couldn't remember if I'd seen the first Insidious and I didn't want to watch a sequel if I didn't remember the original. So I looked up the movie and realized I'd been mistaking Insidious, which I'd never watched, for Sinister, another one-word-title horror movie. I remember Sinister well, except for it's name apparently, because it starred Ethan Hawke as a writer (as imagined by Hollywood, so completely unrealistic) and the kills were...unlikely, I'll say.

While figuring this out, I realized that The Red Door is the FOURTH movie in a franchise. The second Insidious movie picks up right where the first one leaves off (with Jenna Ortega in a tiny role; that girl is in all the horror movies lately VIVA LA RAZA!). The third film seems to abandon the original characters while keeping the general premise. And the fourth film returns to (at least some of) the original characters. Of course, I could not start with the FOURTH movie in a franchise, so I watched both one and two. The cast includes two ghost hunter types in addition to a medium. I cannot stand ghost hunting tv shows and these guys were definitely in that mold, rather than modeled after, say, the paranormal investigators in Poltergeist or, ten years earlier, The Haunting of Hell House. The only ghost hunters I have any chill for are the Ghostfacers in Supernatural, who proved "Gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day."

There are some nice callbacks to the original in the second Insidious. It makes sense that this installment is called Chapter 2. But I'm unsure that those moments of "oh, that's what was happening" are enough to offset the extremely tedious nature of the sequel. There's flashbacks and recaps to orient the new viewer, but ***SPOILERS FOR  A 13-YEAR-OLD MOVIE***there's also a duality to the original--what happened to the son also happened to the father when he was a child--that feels stretched too thin for a whole 'nother movie. To verve it up, a serial killer is tossed into the mix, which gives the characters an excuse to explore an abandoned hospital and a different haunted house.

That was something interesting to me--all these haunted houses were multi-story, forcing characters to run up and down the stairs to check on children or investigate ghostly activities. It's unclear how the family of five, relying solely on the father's salary as a public school teacher, could even afford such houses. (Or how two single mothers, each with a single child, both ended up in mansions.) So many floors, so many doors, so many hiding places. That makes for a good horror movie--all the built-in jump scares--but it also makes me wonder why in so many movies, being haunted is an affliction of the affluent, who are presented as being middle class. It's like punishment: "What do you expect, with all those rooms?" There's also a suggestion of history in these big houses, but for the main family at the heart of the story, the ghosts are "imported", not linked to the house itself. So it's other people's history that haunts. It reminds me of what Dr. Kinitra Brooks said at Sirens in 2021 about how the flood of Evil Character redemptions arcs trends alongside white guilt.

Watching the preview of Insidious: The Red Door that plays when one's  noodling around Netflix gives me the impression that this sequel also relies on a lot of retelling. Frankly I'm not invested enough to continue the Insidious marathon.

J and I took a long weekend (Thursday through Tuesday) to drive to Estes Park, Colorado, to see Murder By Death play at The Stanley Hotel Concert Hall. We stayed in the historic Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. The hotel really leans into its spooky reputation. The whiskey bar served a Redrum Punch and the brunch place had dishes called "Danny Boy!" and "Wendy? Darling?" When we first rode the elevator up to our room on the third floor, an employee was riding with us and, upon learning it was our first visit, assured us that we would get scared.

We didn't. None of the spirits on site wanted anything to do with us, not even Cassie, the dog that scratches at people's doors to be let in and then sleeps in a warm puddle at the foot of the bed. We did happen upon a graveyard in one of our rambles on the property; it was a pet cemetery for one cat and several dogs that lived at the hotel. This wasn't creepy so much as bittersweet. Several of the graves had tokens left on the gravestone and one had a squeaky toy at the base of the stone. It was heartening to see the animals are still loved.



This was our third MBD concert, but the first without any other acts. I discovered I actually like seeing an opening act or two. It enhances the anticipation for the headliners. Before the music, there was a psychedelic slideshow featuring stills from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.



The hotel tries to appeal to fans of both Stephen King's original The Shining and the Kubrick version. For example, even though the book featured animal topiaries that come to life to threaten the characters, the hotel has a (fledgling) hedge maze, because so many tourists expected a maze. MBD likewise mixed the two versions: their slideshow was Kubrick but their posters on sale featured sparring lion topiaries.

MBD were in fine form and played a mix of old and new songs, including their cover of "Blue Christmas." The floor throbbed with the volume of the music, and at one point everyone was stomping and J imagined the floor caving in. Throughout the concert the slideshow continued, mostly featuring clips from black and white movies, including westerns, a werewolf flick, and maybe even a documentary about Inquisition-style torture devices (no gore, only creep).

It was amazing to be that high up in the mountains (~7800 ft above sea level), and I couldn't stop thinking about how heinous the construction must've been in 1909-ish. Rich people and their whims! One year when the Stanleys invited Harry Houdini to perform at Estes Park, Houdini sent 6 glass cases up the mountain for his big act, and only 2 cases made it intact. So even once the resort was established, it was obviously still a bumpy trip. The air was so dry that every time J pushed the button for the elevator, he got a wicked shock--one and two inch arcs in blue AND white. We joked that the elevator didn't like J, but the one time I pushed the button, I got a little shock, too.



This was our first extended trip without Ash. We agreed that it was time to start doing more things as a couple and let Ash exercise his new-adult privileges and responsibilities. J kept thinking he was leaving something behind when we left the whiskey bar or restaurants, but I told him I knew that feeling from my first women's retreat--it was being without Ash that caused it! 

All in all, we had a fabulous time and I would love to do it again. And I may get my chance, since MBD has been performing around New Year's Eve at The Stanley for ten years now.