Scott Teems is most persuasive when he gives troubled people time to become understandable. His work on Rectify suits that patience; Insidious: The Red Door finds a credible family drama but too few fresh scares.
Fi1m perspective
In Insidious: The Red Door (2023), Josh Lambert is fogged and short-tempered, while his son Dalton paints things he cannot explain. Scott Teems’s screenplay, from a story by Teems and Leigh Whannell, makes their erased memories a problem in daily life. We felt for the pair because forgetting has left them unhappy without giving them a way to understand why. The father and son business is convincing enough to deserve better scares. Teems gives the film a sound reason to return to this family, though not enough to make it worth recommending.
The stronger reason to follow Teems’s writing is Rectify (2013). His feature debut as writer-director, That Evening Sun (2009), had already drawn on Southern literary material. He wrote for Ray McKinnon’s series from 2014 to 2016 and directed two episodes; it would be foolish to credit him with everything it does well. But the slow attention paid to a man returning home after death row is well suited to his interest in detailed character work. Aden Young’s performance makes that patience rewarding, and the murder plot can wait.
The Quarry (2020), co-written with Andrew Brotzman, continued his work as a writer-director. The move into horror screenplays included Halloween Kills (2021), written with Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, and Firestarter (2022). That shift puts his interest in character under a different pressure: the audience is also waiting to be frightened. The Red Door suggests he can give an established series a worthwhile human problem, but the finished film does little to make its familiar scares interesting.
Patrick Wilson’s direction takes that father and son seriously, and the MRI sequence supplies the fright the film needs. Elsewhere, the familiar red light and doors leave the character work carrying too much of the evening. We would welcome another long-form drama that gave Teems’s interest in character as much space as Rectify does. Start there, provided a drama in no hurry to reach its murder plot sounds like a pleasure rather than a warning.
Biography
Scott Teems is an American filmmaker, screenwriter and director. He was born in Lilburn, Georgia.
Teems began his career writing and directing the feature film That Evening Sun (2009). He wrote and directed episodes of the series Rectify (2013–2016), and later directed the feature The Quarry (2020). His other writing credits include Halloween Kills (2021), Firestarter (2022), Insidious: The Red Door (2023) and the story for The Exorcist: Believer (2023). He has also written for Narcos: Mexico (2018).
