Patrick Wilson is one of those actors who could have cruised through Hollywood on his good looks, but has admirably taken chances and met the resulting challenges. Through TV’s “Fargo” and the miniseries “Angels in America,” as well as award-winning Broadway revivals and movies from “Little Children” to the hit horror film franchises “The Conjuring” and “Insidious,” Wilson has consistently proved he has more to give than meets the eye.

Now he’s made his movie directing debut with “Insidious: The Red Door,” the fifth installment in the demon possession series and the third starring Wilson as haunted Josh Lambert (movies three and four were prequels). It’s remarkably good-looking for an actor-helmed production.

Unfortunately, it’s otherwise rather bland.

Ty Simpkins is also back as Josh’s now college-age son Dalton, and Rose Byrne appears briefly as Renai Lambert, who has divorced Josh since he tried to kill her and their children in “Insidious: Chapter 2.”

If you retained anything from that 2013 sequel, you may recall that Dalton astral-projected into the terrifying Further dimension to get rid of the evil spirit that was controlling his father. The new movie informs us that after that, both Josh and Dalton were hypnotized to forget their awful supernatural experiences. Now, as a guilt-ridden absent father and a surly, long-haired teen, Josh and Dalton share an uncomfortable cross-country trip to the younger Lambert’s college campus.

There the talented, if morbid, Dalton is encouraged by drawing Professor Armagan (Hiam Abbass of “Succession,” having an artsy-fartsy good time) to go deep inside to express himself. The next thing we know, his hand is inexplicably bleeding onto a charcoal sketch of, yes, the title red door. He tells his roommate Chris (Sinclair Daniel), who talks like she’s a living Instagram post, that he’s always been told he was in a coma the year he was 10. But vague, disturbing memories of something else are coming back to him.

Meanwhile, Josh tries to recall his lost year, too. One of the film’s few intriguing suspense sequences occurs when Josh gets abandoned in a claustrophobic MRI machine.

Other fun, icky stuff involves the ghost of a puking frat boy and the return of presumably beloved creepy characters like series writer Leigh Whannell’s Specs and Lin Shaye’s demonologist Elise Rainier.

But even with half-a-dozen decent jump scares, this PG-13 effort isn’t very frightening. Part of that has to do with a pokey sense of pacing; tension just isn’t built during long lead-ups to paranormal action.

And for an actor-directed movie, the lead performances aren’t very good. Simpkins plays the increasingly haunted Dalton as simply out of it most of the time. As mentioned, the exuberant Daniel is saddled with phony dialogue that is the film’s true horror. Wilson’s acting feels a little distracted, as it probably was by directing duties. Only Byrne seems to nail emotions properly, but she’s written out of the film’s first half.

If anything keeps “Red Door” going, it’s Autumn Eakin’s exquisite cinematography. The Further looks like a shadow reflection of the real world, and she and Wilson never fail to come up with aesthetically interesting and sometimes ingenious light sources to illuminate portions of it.

Armagan gives a lecture on chiaroscuro at one point: “The balance between light and dark is what we’re after.” Wilson certainly gets what visual storytelling is about. It’s enough to make us look forward to improvements in his directing skills.

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer.