The biggest horror film of the year so far is a sequel that critics trashed

Insidious: The Red Door is having a great summer at the box office, and it didn’t need good critical scores to do it.

The movie debuted in theaters on July 7, and more than a month later, it bears a 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. (Before you say anything: We know RT isn’t a reliable barometer for a film’s quality — but it does prove that most critics weren’t favorable when reviewing Red Door.)

Despite less-than-stellar notes, the film has managed to do great business, even while competing against the latest Mission: Impossible and the box office maelstrom of Barbie and Oppenheimer.

Per Deadline, this past weekend Insidious blew past M3GAN‘s worldwide gross of $180.8 million and achieved $182.5 million — making Red Door the highest-grossing horror movie of the year globally.

This is particularly impressive given that the film also has a pretty low audience score (at 69 percent) and Cinemascore (a C+) in the U.S.

The film was helmed by star Patrick Wilson in his directorial debut, and although the consensus around his direction seems to be generally positive, a lot of fans feel that movie just didn’t have a good enough story to tell. Essentially, it picks up many years after the conclusion of Insidious 2, where members of the Lambert family had their horrible memories of the Further repressed and seemed to live happily ever after.

Unfortunately for them, it was just a matter of time until they were once again at the center of long Steadicam shots while searching for the source of a strange noise that is either an errant wind chime or a demon primed to bite their face.

But instead of finding a revelatory narrative to bring these characters face to face with their nightmares once again, the movie opts to put audiences through the same paces as the other entries while we wait through interminable stretches for the characters to realize things we already know.

Still, The Red Door has proven to have great legs through the mid-summer frame. It has benefitted from a great run in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, and it’s now the highest-grossing horror movie of all time in the Philippines. Its other standout offshore markets include Mexico, the UK, and France.

This means there will likely be an Insidious 6. Our recommendation to the filmmakers is to focus on brand-new characters and stop acting like the Further is this terrifically interesting mythology that we can’t wait to unriddle again. We already know too much, and that’s the kiss of death in a horror film. Though apparently not at the box office.