The Insidious Franchise (For When You Need Either A Good Scare Or A Good Cry?)

It's been a long time coming, but another horror franchise was looming large in my to do bin for episode content.  I've tackled some of the modern classics, and with The Conjuring franchise in the rearview mirror, it dawns upon me to take on the other Patrick Wilson spooky multi-movie series.  So Insidious o'clock, here we are.

If you like hauntings and family dramas with emotional resonance, this is the franchise and episode for you.  I break down the confusing, but important, chronological order you should watch these in, show you who the real MVP and main character of the franchise is, and lastly, try not to, but inevitably compare Insidious and Conjuring.

Make sure to let me know what you think of this horror franchise.  Hit me up on social to share if you have had any emotional resonance or tears shed watching any of these movies at @NickNackMovies or @NickNack_IC on Instagram, Tik Tok, Letterboxd or Twitter.  It may surprise you which movie I cried at.

Transcript

Nick Nack Goes to the Movies Pod S4E7

-Intro/Jingle

-Well hello loyal listener, it is me, Nick, from this very podcast you are currently listening to, Nick Nack Goes to the Movies.  This is of course the first episode of 2024, it has been a bit of an absence, but we are somehow back into NFL and work hard season.  Hopefully this podcast will have more regular episodes and hit the internet stratosphere before that next season is upon us and the inevitable hope of a Packers and Bills Super Bowl.

-But as this is not a sports podcast, we should, I wager, make it back to movie content.  I ended 2023 with a spooky seasonal slasher.  And while there are only so many of those, the number of spooky movies out there seem endless.  In the spirit of being back into the fall and wanting to always feel something, normally just fear to supersede any other feelings floating around in my mind, I dug deep for another franchise.  Sure, I could have seen a one-off like Night Swim or the latest Conjuring franchise entry, The Nun 2: The Re-Nunnening.  Now I did watch those all, but I figured it was finally time to dive into another like series for a full blown episode.

-I am of course talking about Insidious.  5 movies that started coming out in 2011 with the most recent coming out just last year.  

-Insidious is the other Patrick Wilson spooky series and like the Conjuring before, I was led to believe this was like, the scariest thing ever.  But young Nick thought Pirates of the Caribbean and the Walking Dead were the scariest things out there at one point so clearly, I have grown to craving this feeling of fear to not feel other feelings.  And this was the latest attempt to find my limit to see what will truly scare me silly.

-But this episode is not fully about how scary things are in Insidious, it is also about how these movies stack up individually and as a series.  In short, are they good?  The age-old question for these things, especially for a series of movies or multiple seasons of a show.  This one especially is tricky with the spread-out nature of finding these on streaming services.

-And while I will try to keep this as isolated as possible to these 5 movies, it goes without saying there will be some comparisons to The Conjuring, and not just because of a certain actor who takes center stage in both of these franchises.

-Actors

-So yes, Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert, who was great in that first Aquaman and was unfortunately a part of the super strange sequel and endcap of the DCEU, he is in both Insidious and The Conjuring.  In the later, he was one member of a married couple fighting demons and such.  Here in Insidious, he is a dad, sometimes his character is portrayed as a kid, who is just dealing with all these gosh darn spirits, or entities as this franchise calls them.

-While he is outstanding in this and so many other movies, especially in this genre, you have to go with Lin Shaye as the main staple of this franchise.  Maybe it is because I spent so much time with her Elise Rainier after chronologically watching these movies, we had 2 whole movies with her before ever really meeting the Lambert family.  I have not seen her in anything else, something that will be evident for a lot of these franchise actors, but man does she bring so much here.  I can’t believe how people would have watched these movies starting with Insidious and how they used her character after that movie. 

-I can only speak to the roles I have seen people in, and Rose Byrne was of course one of those actors who had a big a role as any in the X-men reboot.  She also had a good active role in the 28 days sequel, 28 weeks later.  And I remember seeing that the big difference between Conjuring and Insidious is if you prefer Byrne or Vera Farmiga.  And with that in mind, I just never felt like she did as much as I wanted her to.  We as these movies go, they become a bit of a family drama and the standard someone in the family keeps seeing and hearing things.  She, Renai Lambert, is important for the story structure, but I just wish she did more for the plot.  Even less was done by the non-special supernatural gift brother actor, Andrew Astor, playing Foster Lambert.  

-Now the other brother Dalton Lambert played by Ty Simpkins, is actually pretty loaded up with things I have known from.  His role in Iron Man 3, wish we had more MCU time with him just to see where it would go, the younger brother in Jurassic World, not as good, and now this series where he has a pretty prominent role when this franchise shifts to a father/son story in the later half of the series.

-The unexpected comic relief in this movie also started early on and sort of dropped off as the series went chronologically with Tucker played by Angus Sampson and Specs played by Leigh Whannell.  I did not expect some goofballs in this franchise, deff nothing like this for intentional humor in the Conjuring.  But for your first of the fun cinema facts this episode, how about Wahnnell being in the Matrix Reloaded?  Was he a main guy, no, no he was not, but he deff has a memorable death.  Spoiler alert not needed for a 2003 movie I hope.  But he was one of the engineer guys on the ship who died with that ship blew up outside of the Matrix, the super Final Destination style death sequence.

-Just to round out the other three people I want to mention, not as many of these were default staples in all 5 entries, in fact, none of them were.  Was Dermot Mulroney the biggest role of Insidious 3 as dad Sean Brenner?  No, but I did like him a lot in Scream 6 and man am I nervous for that franchise and its future, but at least there is a shot that I Know What You Did Last Summer is coming back with the staple actors Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.  

-Not the first time this has happened, but when I saw Barbara Hershey as the mom Lorraine Lambert, I swore I had seen her in so many other things.  But did I remember her as the Queen of Heats in the Once Upon A Time series?  Maybe, but I sure doubt it.

-And lastly, possibly one of the most known actors in the whole series, especially in the horror world, Steve Coulter.  He was a priest in the Conjuring franchise, he was one of the main leaders of Alexandria in the mid-point of Walking Dead, and now in Insidious he was a psychic medium and not an exorcist, but he at least is a demon like academic.  So, the parallels with both him and Wilson are fascinating with their roles in the Conjuring and Insidious movies.  

-While I think Conjuring is more popular overall, Insidious actually came first, and not like barely.  But 2013 was a big year for both series and of course Patrick Wilson, and to a smaller degree, Steve Coulter.  

-Now as a watch of these movies goes, like Conjuring, I am going in chronological order.  It was for sure not how they were released.  Instead going in a release order of 3, 4, 1, 2, and finally 5.  Maybe this is not the best way to watch these.  Maybe it changes cool foreshadowing moments as just linear things in a timeline.  But even so, this franchise has flashbacks even further from events we see so, I am just gonna do the best as I can and start this episode with Insidious 3 which is all about the glory of the series true MVP and lead, Elise Rainer.

-Insidious: Chapter 3

-With the convoluted number structure in these movies and where they fall on a chronological timeline, I will try to not hold that against them this much.  These movies are all fiction with no reality to base their stories on so they can make up whatever they want and in reality, they probably didn’t have a 5-movie plan or anything like that.

-If you start these chronologically, like I did with Conjuring, you are gonna be thrown into a world without a tone of tone buildup or expectations.  The first chronological nun conjuring movie will see you meeting some old nuns and spooky stuff happens to you, nowhere near meeting the Warren power couple.  The first Insidious movie starts the same way most do, meeting a family moving into a spooky house and such.  Here, to kick the series off in timeline order, we meet Elise contacting a spirit, or trying to at least.  Immediately you can tell she is an acting force in such a brief time. 

-Also, remember that these movies always have the same issues, don’t go calling out to the dead, don’t go playing with Ouija boards, which is how at least to some degree the Conjuring 2 happened, and like that one movie, don’t grab haunted hands that let you be a dead person for a bit.

-I don’t know how much this movie does overall to make you care about Quinn, played by Stefanie Scott, the lead of the movie who is not necessarily the most interesting character.  I am sure like everything you relate to her more as a teenage girl in the same way that parents will relate to the single parent frazzled to run a house played by Dermot Mulroney.  The more I care about her story is mostly, based on her family ties to her deceased mother.

-I don’t know how many jump scares this franchise starts you with in release date order, but man do they get you with a sudden hit with sending out non-Elise lead getting drilled with a car.  She did run across big city NYC traffic earlier, and that is a big no no.  City slicker driving is not pedestrian friendly all the time, I learned that early on moving to LA for a spell.  

-In a movie franchise that has a really interesting take on the world of the spirits and demons and all that, it is wild that they also throw in a lady doomsayer in there for extra measure.  I don’t think they needed to have a Crazy Ralph here on top of the supernatural stuff, maybe some subtly in this would have helped, but it is a bit much.

-While Quinn may not be the most interesting story to follow, heck sometimes she is downright annoying, man do they have some good scare moments, love her knock on the wall to find the usual answerer was not actually home to being touched by someone spooky above that.  In a weird way this movie actually gives more proof to spooky happenings with clear breaks on walls and wet footprints.  Stuff that in most movies you would wager as irrefutable proof, the same ish they tried to explain away poorly in the second Conjuring movie.  I did rewatch the first 2 of those before jumping into this episode.  

-As the first of these, and they have to make sense watching in this order, you never get over the fact that Elise is a certified bad ass with how she manages to handle and deal with all these demons in her life.  She is an old lady who just has a sense of being in control of things that you would think, no way can she.  This is no old Laurie Strode who has a shooting range in her back yard.  

-I really do forget sometimes how much this entry is loaded with jump scares.  The villain here is like, not that special.  The scares are good and scary, but the demon, is just very, blah.

-I don’t really know what the heck these spirit types are going for haunting this girl, but man are things not good for this girl who ends up in like a full body cast eventually.  This in a weird way is like the most supportive believable dad in all of horror.  Pretty quick he in right there working to save her from supernatural stuff with Elise.  Love a supportive parent!

-The visuals for The Further, this version of like an afterlife or maybe like Stranger Things the upside down, also are so cool playing with darkness, light colors, and the scares so prevalent in the darkness.  This movie plays with them so well of just a unique spirit world and a cool way we see it exist.  And while it is not always darkness, the sprit people are always so haunting how they are made up and man the smiling ones are the worst.  It sure reminds me of that movie that is pretty much my limit for this genre, and they are putting another one of those out that looks even scarier.  

-It is also worth noting, you get to see that Elise has been fighting an entity in this movie for a while now.  Here is where things get a bit off because you are missing some context to why she is being hunted.  She helped a young Josh Lambert, Patrick Wilson, and that demon has been after her ever since.  So she does have to fight that demon a bit throughout here causing a real issue to what she is working on and her ex-profession.

-Now I have never been a fan of the ghost show people who run around maybe spooky places. I am a video person so the things I know you can do to edit make me doubtful, but I would never go to one of those places.  The religious upbringing in me makes me warry of haunted stuff.  But it is funny when this movie introduces our own pair of these guys and they do eventually become staples of the series too.

-Probably one of the better scenes, because this movie takes time to grow on you, is possessed Quinn taking down all of the ghost hunters, going wrench happy, and this spirit almost making her take her own life, all before Elise shows up to save the day, being inspired by Steve Coulter’s, Carl, another demonologist.

-The first of these Insidious movies is somewhat a family story, this is just an abridged family story you only explore with for a single movie.  But man do I relate to this dad so much here, he is doing all he can to keep this family functioning and by the end of things, safe.  While it is not his story, you are suppoused to say it is Quinn’s, he helps a ton.  But really it is and Elise story, even if they take her out from time to time.  One she is there in the end, she girl bosses her way to command this would be platoon of guys to help her fight some demon ass.  Even if the demon here is so goofy that is just wants to be a dick for the sake of being a dick.

-And speaking of dick spirits, man is it great to see Elise fight off the woman in black.  Especially literally saying not today to literal death.  It feels great to see.  I wonder what it would have been like seeing this knowing how the first movie ends.  It must have been uplifting knowing this demon kills her eventually but she had a fight back moment in the past.  Here it is a precursor to her having a small victory but it makes the death so much sadder two movies later at the same hands, not just possessed by someone who has leveled the playing field as they both now technically ‘live’.  But the girl bossing is strong with the great retort of ‘come on bitch’

-She does the same stuff to this demon who can’t breathe.  She is so good fighting all these demons and just being a genuinely nice and caring mother figure.  She is the girl boss final girl that we should all strive to be.  And it never feels forced or anything like that.  They just found a way to make someone strong and powerful and also just a caring person.  And it is all acted to perfection by Lin Shaye.

-Speaking of mothers, man do I love this movie in the last 30 minutes or so.  But seeing Quinn find that love from her mother and have that moment of closure with her.  That act of love, man it gets me every time.  The goosebumps shudder feel on your back.  The tearups.  Damn this movie.  It is no Coco cry, but man is this such a good moment of family love from the afterlife we all need.  The first time I did this I had to call my parents, and for sure my mom after.  It may not be the best movie.  Maybe not even the best in the series, but the times it leans into, and I mean really leans into the family and motherhood angle, it gets me.  And it feels so good coming from Elise as a good mothering figure, the message rings true and man what an end.

-She does the same with these two ghosthunters as their mother and eventual partner in this industry.  So many good vibes in this movie at the end.  But as all scary movies do, the true end has to make us feel a bit uneasy with one final jump scare relating to the first movie.  Boo to that.  It is a complex movie of ups and downs, but if you can make it to the end spirit contacting scene, you will find some great moments from this series’ true lead and maybe shed some unexpected tears along the way.  Did you do the same?  Let me know on social if you did at any of the usual places

-Insidious: The Last Key

-With how the first one released ends, they had to go to the past to keep Elise in these movies, which had to be a wild discovery that they killed off their best asset so quickly on and go into the world of making more entries in this franchise.

-While overall this movie is second chronologically, the first thing to happen in the series happens here with young Elise and seeing her gift/curse of being able to see the other side.  And it sucks to see her affinition for the spirit world be the cause of abuse from her dad, her mom seems to be understanding of it all, but at times the old trope of the abusive hard-nosed old dad from back in the day just feels so, been there done that.  

-Also, point from earlier in the episode.  It had been a while since ideating this topic for the episode and watching these for the first time.  A few scenes stand out to me, some sad and some scary.  But I forgot, and now I can remember that this franchise ditches the subtle scares from things that Mike Flannagan does in his haunted house shows, subtle the scares are there the whole time for that.  Instead, this franchise is actively littered with jump scares.  Not sure what I was thinking.  But talking and rewatching these, now I know, jump scares area bit part of it all.  Unlike deaths in this franchise.  For as scary as these can be, that is one thing it is not known for here.

-Now the crazy thing about this franchise, not counting like demon characters, no one really dies in this franchise, especially on-camera.  Elise’s parents die early on, we see how her mom died based on a possession thing, and her abusive demon possessed dad dies, eventually.  That is a big chunk of the deaths already for the whole five movie series

-It does suck seeing Elise as a kid get possessed and be blamed and feel blamed for the death of her mom.  The one parent she had that cared for her.  They do have a thing with motherhood in this franchise.  Even if we had a random one off character and family to follow last time, this time that is sprinkled in with the old family life of Elise.

-Also, worth noting, that I think the villain was not super scary looking in the first one.  No matter what you can say about this movie and the level of quality, it for sure is scarier looking here.  Breathing mask old guy is one thing, but key hand guy, for sure scarier.  

-Also noting, Warren, super cute dog that of course is named for the famous real world paranormal super power couple Ed and Loraine Warren.  Which of course shares an actor in this movie, Patrick Wilson

-I love the movie character Elise and I love more movies with her, but like Conjuring sometimes, these movie entries will always feel a bit superfluous without a continual threaded story.  Elise replaces the Warren’s in her franchise as at times going place to place until we meet the Lambert family.  While the haunts are not always interesting, the cute pairing of how she partners with the ghost hunter group of Spectral Sightings.  Knowing they are just as important as she is in times for the series, fun to see more of their rapport with each other.

-While the actors I see a lot from Walking Dead, pending on how short they are in the show, I pick them out from a crowd easy.  Heck the dad here, Kirk Acevedo was in like 2 episodes in the second Governor arc, but I will always think the same and not get past my first foray into spookier things.  Now look at me doing Insidious and stuff for fun.

-I don’t know as I think which franchise is the scarier one between this and Conjuring.  Even knowing time relativity and people can’t die now, I did not know that before.  And it is scary sending, boss lady albeit, but an older woman to go exploring a haunted house with like no help.  There is no big bad quite as bad as the Nun, but the overall scares are all here with the spirits being spookier.

-I don’t know if I needed to see the childhood of Elise, it sucks to see what sort of shaped her and gave her that strength, but if nothing else, seeing her stand up to her dad is great to see.  The estranged brother storyline for abandoning him, I don’t know.  I don’t like sad her, I like her kicking astral plane ass.

-This movie takes some wild turns of me forgetting what kind of movie we are watching, but when it becomes a very human guy with a gun that one of the ghost boys kills, it takes us a moment to come back to a haunted movie setting as well as the family angle that we are used to for what this franchise brings.  The same thing happens with the Conjuring movies, but most of the movies in this franchise relate to either Elise or the Lambert families.  Conjuring I guess is 50/50 Warren family to the other less good movies

-It is nice that the grand message is Elise helps a random family last movie to get back into things, and now she can come back to help her family after she left her brother so long ago, even if she was just a kid and it was not her fault obviously.

-That key demon is spooky for sure, and sticking keys in people, gross spooky stuff for sure.  Turning someone’s vocal chords off, hate to see that.

-This is also one of the most gaslight movies that has ever been made.  Her possessed ghost daddy was holding and abducting and killing women and Elise just assumed they were more ghost girls because, well, why would they not be.  That makes more sense than your dad being possessed and also kidnapping women.

-We are gonna take a small tangent here quick.  Love Elton John music and I was really happy with how they made that movie version of his life in Rocket Man.  They had a really nice scene where he forgives himself with his younger and older selves meeting and the great line, ‘When are you going to hug me’.  You think it is about someone else and getting love from his dad or those around him, but really, he gets to finally accept and love himself.  That same thing happens here in a spooky movie setting.  Those with trauma have to overcome it.  And one of the main reasons I got into this genre was seeing all this as my healthy therapy in life.

-It is interesting to see this family story have a little more full circle with her estranged niece also having similar powers.  Things are not as aggressive with her dad, Elise’s brother, but the idea of astral seeing is not super exciting to him.  It is cool to have that family connection of dealing with things with her parents and also dealing with things with her brother and his kids.

-I don’t know is this strong parent moment had that same impact as the first movie.  But seeing her dad fight back from the darkness and her mother come back to save Elise and her two nieces, it is nice to see.  I would have expected more, and with it being in relation to Elise, it just didn’t hit as hard.  But also bonding the family come together with Elise and her brother, also good and nice.  But it also does not help that the two nieces have no further place in the plot.  I wish they could have found a way to put either of them in the last movie red door.

-This movie is just fine, but it had moments of the family story I would have cared about, but even having the subject be closer to the best part of the franchise for a family story.  It becomes less interesting in a weird way

-Insidious

-So this is a movie that really does start off how many in this overall hauntings world does.  A family is in a house, moving in or out, mostly moving in in the genre.  And things really are just a ball of stress with so many kids running around.  HGTV never covers all the spooky houses of new home owners when they do there few months moved in follow-ups.  For shame

-The big difference is really having Rose Byrne to co-star with Patrick Wilson here.  It is another married couple.  But instead of hunting ghosts and demons, they are hunted themselves by one and need help.

-Also, strange odd part that from lost key that Elise sees Dalton, the main kid of the children, it is weird that past Elise sees him from the further fall off the ladder and does nothing.  Just an oddity, but she does leave it open so.  And I hate to think it, did Elise leave multiple doors open, one in her youth, and another here to cause more haunts?

-The first two movies had more obvious scares.  The footstep muck, I don’t know.  Things hit harder.  And honestly, there is something fun about how this movie, the first of the franchise that set the tone for how these movies should be, it has like subtle scares.  A face in the window, who knows what else.  But it is just interesting that this movie has such a good slow progressive build.

-One more interesting tease, as someone who is not and will never be a Saw person, I still know what the puppet guy on the bike looks like, and his face for sure was teased on a blackboard in one of the school non-horror normal scenes with Patrick Wilson in school.  

-Also, it it weird to see him in such a different type of role as a less caring parent instead of the super dad he is in the Conjuring world.  But he now is just a dad with a spooky past instead of someone in the industry of fixing things, he is not the Elise in this story, she is.

-Even though I always think of Elise and her being the badass lady of the story, Barbara Hershey as the mom Lorraine Lambert is pretty gosh darn good too for those strong older women that are littered in this series.  Not as much as some really good jump scares.  But even though the more I watch these, I realize how much of a staple they are.  They, not to the Mike Flannigan level, but they also have those strange subtle atmospheric ones.  Having the eventual oldies song theme music change and get louder as Rose Byrne walks past the window, so many of these unique things.  I know the Nun with the picture frame has to be the scariest thing from all the Conjuring movies.  And the first insidious probably has the same thing here.  Seeing that demon with fire faced designs just pop up right behind josh on a bright day, that has to be this franchises equivalent, or at least the most reported one.  The end of this movie with the camera gives that a run for its money

-Also, how strange is it that the 2 movies made after these first 2 decide for fun to throw a tease for the lipstick fire faced demon as the main issue villain here.  They did not need to, but it is interesting they did it still just to add a little more connective tissue to the main Lambert family.

-Specs and Tucker may not always be the highlight of the franchise, but there is something to be said about bring some semblance of levity and comic humor while still not being too distracting.  In the same way that Elise is a highlight of the movie when she is on screen.  It is different seeing her here after growing with her for two other movies.  But even still I feel like she commands as much presence as Donald Pleasence did in the Halloween movies.  It is surprising to think how much I care for her in these movies that it takes so long for them to introduce her in this entry.  Like hallway or more of the way through.

-It is always the thought that the first of these franchise movies always seems to be the best, especially when they don’t know it will be a franchise.  But man does this movie have not just subtle scares abut just good subtle plot development and interesting ways to slowly reveal information and not spoon feed the audience.  It will always interesting however that I go so quickly to thinking this dad sucks to seeing his growth in likability to feeling like a really present parent.

-It is weird seeing this style or reaching out that is so different with Elise having the gas mask to do them, something not a part of these things in the other movies, just assuming that this stuff is predicated on her being more cautious coming back to this profession.  

-And even here, Elise still seems like a frailer old woman.  But she is able to fight off demons and not seemingly being ordained to do it, she just has a gift to be able to traverse and has the strength to fight, love to see her in action

-This movie just has fascinating depth of story with this really being a family story of having Patrick Wilson be haunted by a spirit and have this woman in black constantly being after him and in the super interesting way of seeing her get ever closer in childhood pictures.  You feel bad for him and also see him seem like a better father overall and not so absent.  Heck he is going into uncertain fear to save his son and potentially open himself up to some super long repressed issues

-I don’t know if I know a more atmospheric dread to exist in these movies outside of maybe Us and the like upside down version of their world, but man do these scenes always hit hard and strong.  Especially with the fact that you don’t really have any safety nets of what characters are safe once you get past the prequels.  

-It isn’t even just a matter of which thing is scarier between the bride woman in black or the fire demon or just the atmosphere and all the pre-smile souls, but this movie cranks up just how much you want them to all make it through it and get back to their bodies.  Like a much scarier Matrix or something akin to that.

-The movies really do have a way of not making you think things are just good, but really good and it is all over.  Shoot everyone makes it out of here with less than 10 minutes left in the whole movie.

-Well, not many deaths happen here, but just as the movie is about to end, we have one.  And man is it a gut punch, but it is easily one of the most creative and best jump scare moments of the series.  Which makes it all the more better starting things off chronologically.

-The photo trick of Josh and his demon chasing him is for sure something.  And seeing one more obvious final test of Josh seemingly going mad to chocking out the best part of the franchise.  RIP to the goat of the series in the fictional world.  But man how wild is it to see the camera proof that he is the demon, one and the same.  A wild and heartbreaking scare to end a great chapter of the franchise, easily the strongest.  But not the most emotionally resonant, still somehow that third one, and people still think it is weird when I bring that topic up at bars.  Or talk about two powerful vampire content pieces in feminist icon film the invitation and the Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter documentary.

-Insidious: Chapter 2

-So where do we even go for Chapter 2 knowing that the leading lady is dead?  I mean she is the face of the franchise if you watch chronologically.  If you don’t, you would assume is it Josh Lambert.  Well that is wrong a.  And b, she is in way more movies than him I think.

-At least this movie starts with a young Elise, but it is cool that she is voiced by the same OG Elise actor Lin Shaye even with a casted young actor for the flashback.  

-This is a super interesting thing to finally see these referenced Elise and young Josh moments to see why she is the target of this demon and also it gives us more of an idea into the tortured upbringing of Josh.  Super weird he is the ‘hero’ of this movie but also a villain of this whole thing.  You should get my thoughts on the series that Elise is the hero.  I don’t even care that she accidentally left the red door open in the second movie.  She is the best and I won’t be told otherwise.  I love my leading ladies in Scream and Jamie Lee Curtis is elite, but as much as I don’t need to rewatch this franchise, she is top tier and I hope eventual horror genre lists will recognize that as well

-Probably one of the most unexplainable things in this series will always feel like the wild and out nature of Josh getting away shockingly easy with straight up murdering Elise in his own house with his own hands.  Wild how that is so easily forgotten about, especially when things should be so obvious with that photo being taken of the crime.

-Also, I know I rarely referenced him in the first movie he appears in here.  Young kids in horror movies are almost always the worst.  But Ty Simpkins does a good job with the kid with a traumatic moment trying to overcome things here as the astral projection son Dalton Lambert.  He did a good job as the kid from Iron Man 3 as well.  He gets the chance to be the annoying kid more in Jurassic World.

-It really is fun to see the build of Tucker and Specs if you watch it chronologically.  To being fun slackers with a ghost show to actually assisting in solving things while still keeping their fun banter, it is less without Elise as the mother figure in their dynamic, it is nice to see growth from them when you did not really expect it.

-The motherhood is such a point of these movies from the first one with Quinn and her dead mom, Elise and her mom, and of course how she works with her two assistants.  There is a bit of that Rose Byrne and her kids, but here we see the opposite of that with the bride in black and now their mom, what bad motherhood is.  The fatherhood is present a bit, but that always feels more in the next one

-This is the most we get to see Steve Coulter in the series, but it is nice to see him get some redemption from his accusations of being too scared for this world.  And his dice rolling not only gets our fun table D&D folks going, but it is just something nice new and interesting that leads to some more exciting scare ideas 

-They really have Patrick Wilson acting as Jack Torrance.  And he does his best Jack Nicholson with trying to keep up an illusion of family and man and not just ‘Here’s Johnny!’  It is kind of cool to see that balance of seeing the real Josh try and find his way back from the further and almost doing his own haunt to get his families attention.  Interesting to see the shoe on the other haunted foot.

-I don’t know which of these original 2 releases Insidious entries fares better, or even which one is scarier.  I feel like I like more Elise in the first movie but the woman in white and the bride in black are a really interesting parallel for two spooky entities.  And honestly, knowing my lack of appreciation for the nun takes the bride in black pretty gosh darn close to spooky entities that are not my favs.  The second one probably does more with their cast, has spookier things.  But that is what happens when you have a 3.5 million boost to your budget

-Probably one of the most fascinating things is seeing those haunts of Josh from his perspective seeing things in the past.  The Further scenes are staples of this series, but this one takes the rules of it further by having real but spirit Josh visit things we have seen from the first movie too, not just from earlier in this movie.  It is a weird one to wrap your head around, but it takes you along for the ride.

-And this ride has an amazing part, and it is seeing Elise another time.  She is his shining knight and it is great to see her once again fight off demons after dying and having the badass balance of kicking ass and also sharing her unbridled optimism and just, gosh she is the words of affirmation person we all need in our lives who can just fight any obstacles we have in our life.  She does that with both adult Josh and her colleague Carl.

-The spirit world, further always seems scariest when there are just crowds of demons, and this is one of those times.  This movie has had them and it is never not scary.  One or two in seen and you are unnerved, but can handle it, but the mobs of them, or that scene of which ghost in a sheet is the scary one, hate hate that.  Whoever does the makeup on these demons, so good.

-And to not make it too much more of how good Elise is.  You have to respect that some of her ghost fighting is just beating to death one of the big bads of the franchise, while already dead herself, with a rocking horse.  There is a reason she is the best of the series.

-But it is nice to see young Dalton be the reason his dad is able to come back from his possession and be able to rejoin the family.  This starts the fatherhood story that is present in the next and potentially final installment with the Lambert family.  

-And have to point out.  The Tucker and Specs thing, having a guy that big as the tech guy, he is constantly getting knocked out and you would think he could handle things with his size when they get physical.  But he is always the first to get got somehow.

-Now, with this movie ending with a mind wipe of avoiding this world.  It is wild that they do a mind wipe again, this time with Carl.  It lead to many repressed issues that would come back to bite.  Wild they did it again.  Especially with the trauma they experienced, not good, that it is kind of a shared thing that made Josh and Dalton closer than they seemed in the early stages of the first movie.

-It is kind of cool that even after her death the two guys are working with Elise still, even with her being dead.  They can’t see her but somehow the business keeps on going.  Also last point, wild that this young girl at the end is actually Jenna Ortega, a girl also with this gift of I see dead people.  That was one of her first roles, also being in Iron Man 3 for a hot moment.  How about that fun connection and reunion of 2 actors in Insidious 2 and Iron Man 3.  Who knows, maybe as a scream queen herself, she will come back to whatever the next story is for these Insidious movies.

-Insidious: The Red Door

            -As the one I remember most recently being at least interested in the genre, I remember

the marketing for Red Door.  But coming to it last.  The last both chronologically released, this was an interesting one.  I did not know what to expect.  The release dates had taken viewers away from the Lambert family for two movies before coming back to them.  And on top of that, I would have been shocked if they gave such a role to Elise this time around with her death being a bit in the past and the idea of her being wiped away too.  Really of the spooky events that had happened are in theory not a thing for a fair amount of our characters.

-Outside of some cool early visuals with the cemetery, something I wasn’t always thinking about for this series, things are not as exciting for this entry early on, especially with the memory wipe, but somewhere once again, off-camera, Lorraine Lambert dies off camera.  Heck, her funeral to some degree helps set some things off to bring the scary back to this scary movie entry in a scary movie series.  Otherwise if no scary things happened, what would be the point of the movie existing in the past.

-This movie also puts us in a while world where the couple is divorced and things seem way worse off for the family as a whole.  I am sure going all the shining on your wife and family is not great, but if everyone makes it out alive, going back to normal is probably pretty hard overall.  Sad to see without the family trauma that things are just not good between them all.  Dalton is a tortured artist son with teenage angst and his dad is just a sad man trying to bond with his estranged kids.  At least the idea is no matter what, the love between the Warren family is always there.

-I mean, if this memory wipe did not work, we would not have another movie.  So of course, meeting Carl briefly is gonna spark a brief memory, and seeing all of the art happening just being spooky memories.  You are telling me that his mom at least isn’t concerned seeing all this spooky memory art.  Maybe angsty teen artists don’t show parents their art.  Lastly, with art stuff, it is an understandable outlet when he did the same thing as a kid drawing his own astral projection stuff.  

-Also, pour one out for nightlight sleepers.  I love to have a string of blue or cool colored lights going on for nature vibes to go along with the nature sounds.  I am sure I am the worst to have sleepovers with now for my non-negotiable ocean sounds

-So back to the movie, but new character and Dalton’s roommate Chris, a woman, does not really add a lot to this movie.  The college story just never really does anything for me.  The art story, cool, the more stereotypical college thing, not as much.  

-Now art therapy is a thing, and this giving deeper into trauma is the perfect setup for Dalton to have to face his trauma, once again, repressed, just like his fathers, and the cycle sadly repeats itself.  

-As a tortured artist creative type, having never taken a drawing class or even being gifted at it, I appreciate all of this using expression to discover repressed trauma.  Normally I like my horror to be a way to explore overcoming it, but this franchise takes two men who have to relearn it before that can happen weirdly.

-That takes us to the most obvious spooky scene in this movie with claustrophobia and something running around super close to you and unable to do anything.  Thankfully all CT scans I have done have been less eventful than a demon running around there with me

-There are times in the first of these movies, one that I like a lot in Insidious 3, where I tell myself, wow things are slow moving here before we get to the good stuff with Elise and the further.  Even the first Insidious has that a bit, but this movie.  Not only are things maybe slow, there is instead just so much of this movie I really really just could not care less about.  Breaking up both father and son discovering and hopefully overcoming trauma with whatever college scenes just does not matter to me, at all.  And no matter what.  Seeing things repeat themselves of trying to block out trauma and repress it, either make it work and have a happy end or get stuck with this kind of blah retread at times.

-I don’t want to come off as irrationally annoyed about this movie, they still have some scares, not as good ones.  But also, there really is something to be said about watching 4 movies where Elise matters to get stuck with a less interesting family store with frat party set dressings.

-Is it fun to see brief moments of Specs and Tucker, and Elise.  Sure, of course it is.  But does it more piss me off as I yearn for more of what made the franchise good, of course I do.  They did at least bring the fire face demon back who seemingly was never truly dealt with in the first movie, they just sort of escaped things.

-So much of the movie is just dumb because we know as an audience what happened and the characters spend so much of the movie not knowing anything.

-Also, this movie does the cardinal sin of lore adding many movies later. They all do it when movies become franchises.  This movie has Josh’s dad who was a whole important thing allegedly if this movie is to go off of anything, but even retconning something of him being there the whole time would have helped more.  This movie really is just a strange post follow up and it just makes our characters screwed up for no real reason.  If Insidious 2 is gatekeeping 101, really the whole franchise can have that.  This movie here instead is miscommunication 102.

-These movies all pretty much pickup in the last 20-30 minutes or so, and that kind of happens here.  But also, this movie has the weakest version of the further.  It does not have all the atmospheric horror that the rest of the series, even the weaker entries, is known for.

-It is cool to see the red-faced demon back, and actually possession Dalton this time around.  It was always the most visually striking demon here.  But we go from dad saving son to son saving dad back again to dad saving son.  It is a retread, but none that that was needed.  Also, random neat visual thing, art perspective of possessed Dalton pulling a hammer out of a painting, just a cool looking thing, love to see that.

-Now, if they wanted to do something interesting with Josh sacrificing himself for his son, that is neat.  He is proving he is a better father than his, who we once again just met.  But we don’t do that.  Instead we get some wild stuff of painting the door that is red black, sure, why not have that be the reason things close.  But also, why not I guess have his dad show him the way who we have never met.  If it was his mom I would have honestly cared more, at least she had built up history for the series, especially with her off-screen death.

-Now closure points not-withstanding, at least the message of the 5 movies later, at least for the family is shown here.  With the son finally realizing that forgetting makes no sense, you have to remember trauma to get past it.  That is good.  Now, what is bad, that all these movie moments could have had some combination in a better way of at least Carl, Tucker, and Specs.  The things at Josh’s astral projection house could have easily used all 3 of these established characters.  

-There is some closure of moments with the family here, but that could have also been the case at the end of Insidious 2 maybe?  I don’t know, they painted themselves in a corner with the end of the second one.

-Also, while it was nice to see Elise in the very end as a spirit, it sort of comes out of nowhere.  Happy to see her, but they really could have once again, hopefully found something more to do if they wanted to actually include her in all this nonsense of a movie.  At least the song at the end is really nice with Patrick Wilson on the track!

-Like at the end of the day, with 1-2 more of these stories or spinoffs in this series coming out in the next few years, I will watch those yeah.  But man is this currently a weak endcap to it all.

-Letterboxd ratings:

- Insidious: Chapter 2 – 3.5 stars

- Insidious – 3.5 stars

- Insidious: Chapter 3 – 3 stars

- Insidious: The Last Key – 2.5 stars

- Insidious: The Red Door – 2 stars

-wrap/call to action

-It is a bit of a doozy that only the first and last of these movies chronologically are currently available to stream, where at least the main conjuring entries are available on Netflix.  The first of these is on Max and the last is on Netflix for Insidious.  

-So as it is hard to not compare the two Wilson franchises.  Here we go, so yeah, if you look at my Letterboxd ratings, on average these are probably better.  There are some stinkers in Conjuring like La Llorona and the nunning movies.  I think I like the dynamic of Ed and Lloraine Warren.  I rarely care for the families being haunted, I care more for the spirit demon hunter or hunters.  And while Conjuring probably has the edge to most people, it is real hard for me to look past how much the character of Elise matters to me in these.  The nun might be the scariest thing out there for me outside of Saw, don’t need those in my life, but I feel like I get more scared watching Insidious movies.  I don’t need to rewatch these in general, not as much as the slashers of old or Scream, but not often does a horror movie make me cry, hats off to you Insidious 3.  But which franchise do you prefer?  Let me know on social at either NickNack_IC or NickNackMovies on Twitter, Instagram, tik tok, and more.  That is all for me, so hoping to be with you much sooner than last time.  But until then, cheers, and see you next time cinephiles.