Every ‘Insidious’ Franchise Movie, Ranked

Every ‘Insidious’ Movie, Ranked

Into (and out of) the Further.

When it comes to horror in the 2010s, you can’t dismiss the Insidious franchise. Created by Leigh Whannell and James Wan and produced by Sony and Blumhouse Productions, the films at the time of this writing have made over $744 million worldwide, while spending $60.5 million on budget combined. When it comes to horror budgets that don’t break the bank but bring in all of the bank at the box office, Wan and Jason Blum’s work on projects like Insidious makes the success of Obsession (which Blumhouse helped produce) and Backrooms (which Wan was a part of through his Atomic Monster production company) a foregone conclusion.

One key to the success of the Insidious films is how they approached scares. Instead of gory, obvious jump scares cluttering the runtime, Insidious found it best to tease something horrific happening, then let you sit within that tension. It’s highly effective and bleeds into the sixth installment, Insidious: Out of the Further, which stars Amelia Eve and Brandon Perea and brings back some nasty individuals.

The question is, which Insidious film must you watch with the light on? Let’s find out. This is every Insidious film, ranked.

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Insidious: The Last Key (2018)

Director: Adam Robitel
Starring: Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell, Spencer Locke, Caitlin Gerard, Bruce Davison
Release date: January 5, 2018

While Lin Shaye’s Elise Rainier bites the big one at the end of the first Insidious film, the franchise has been able to continue Elise’s story due to the unique way time works in The Further…allowing two movies to tell more of Elise’s backstory.

This film dives more into Elise’s father, the spirits that inhabited her childhood home, and the impact they had on her and her family. It felt like another excuse to get Lin, Specs, and Tucker together for another arm-in-arm walk-off shot. Again, because of the nature of The Further, this film shows how the door to Dalton Lambert’s room opened in the first place; his door is never closed, and when Lorraine contacts Elise about her grandson Dalton, you see where they are going. They likely could have given us more of everything, but this one is really just for those who need a fuller look at Elise’s life.

Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

Director: Patrick Wilson
Starring: Ty Simpkins, Patrick Wilson, Sinclair Daniel, Hiam Abbass, Rose Byrne
Release date: July 7, 2023

Modern Scream King Patrick Wilson owned horror in the 2010sbe a surprise that his directorial debut was the fifth Insidious film. Are we beating the door down for more Patrick Wilson films? Maybe another one to see what he might want to do outside of this franchise, although with the way The Red Door aims to put a cap on this particular storyline, Wilson may have felt it was his duty to usher this one in

In 2019, the Lambert family is more fractured than before. Dalton is on his way to college, but with his father, Josh, and mother, Renai, divorced, it’s been tough for Dalton and Josh to truly connect. The film, like most in the Insidiousfranchise, sets up obvious ways for each character who can travel to interact with someone in The Further. This film has Dalton using his paintings to connect to the repressed memories of The Further and his abilities.

The Red Door has one of those stories that could be wrapped up quickly if folks had one conversation with each other, but Wilson crafted a decent love letter to the franchise, literally closing the door on the Lambert family’s Further issues…allowing another to open. (More on that later.)

Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)

Director: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Stefanie Scott, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell, Lin Shaye
Release date: June 5, 2015

The first of the Elise prequels, Chapter 3 wins points for delivering on a lot of fan service, including showing how Elise first links up with Specs and Tucker to form the union we saw working in lockstep in the first Insidious film.

Taking things back to 2007, Elise is helping a teen named Quinn who’s desperately trying to contact her mother, who had been dead for a year at that point. Elise is grieving the loss of her husband, Jack, and is trying to not use the gifts she’d had since she was little. With entities like the Bride In Black and the Man Who Can’t Breathe terrorizing Quinn, Elise stops at nothing to make sure those who should be in the Further remain there.

Again, this film gets points solely for highlighting how Specs and Tucker meet Elise and become partners. W redface scare at the very end of the film as well, but truth be told, Lin Shaye carries. With fewer proper Insidious scares on-screen this go-round, Elise’s story is central to keeping things moving, and she does a great job of diving deep into the material. It’s her belief in what’s going on that helps the viewer stick around.

Insidious: Out of the Further (2026)

Director: Jacob Chase
Starring: Amelia Eve, Brandon Perea, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Lin Shaye
Release date: August 21, 2026

As the sixth film in the Insidious franchise, Out of the Furtheris both grounded in the franchise’s lore but is also the first entry fully outside of the Lambert family, although Lin Shaye’s still along for the ride, as Elise has to help usher somebody into (and out of) The Further, right?

Amelia Eve stars as Gemma, who has had the power to travel between the world of the living and The Further since she was born, something she inherited from her mother. Now a mother herself, The Further beckons Gemma once again, this time with a new goal: to have the demonic entities that reside in The Further find their way out. That’s where Elise comes in, but truthfully, Out of the Further shines because it’s a proper return-to-form for the franchise.

If you thought the Chapter 3 through The Red Door were lighter on the scares that encapsulated so much of the earlier films in the franchise, Out of the Further ups the scare quotient, playing on everything from dental visits to claustrophobia to, hell, an array of demons just waiting for you to slip so they can take your place.

The cast, which includes a great performance from Brandon Perea as Gemma’s boyfriend, is along for the ride, getting as cringey and creepy as they need to be to deliver these off-kilter scares. Some may say that the ending feels a bit much even for the Insidious franchise, but the question really is, what’s next for this series?

Insidious (2010)

Director: James Wan
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey
Release date: April 1, 2011

Some 15 years after the release of the first Insidious movie, it makes sense that James Wan was on board to give Kane Parsons guidance on Backrooms, which plays on the same “the horror is not knowing what’s around the corner” kind of vibes that turned Insidious into a massive global horror franchise.

The key to understanding the film is to understanding that it truly lives up to its title; while it may feel bad to say, while the entire film is built on trying to figure out what’s going on with young Dalton Lambert, who isn’t in a coma but also isn’t waking up, the real evil is that the entities that were drawing on Dalton’s powers while he slept were really beckoning his father, Josh, who is unaware that he shares the same…gift(?) that his son does.

It’s scary as hell, feeding off the dread of the unknown in seemingly quiet, empty spaces. The places your brain goes in trying to guess what’s in there is what Insidious feeds off of, magically so. Once you realize why Josh has been so tired throughout the film, the last jumpscare, which finds Josh totally possessed and murdering Elise, is still frighting, but the dots start to connect just as the film ends.

Don’t fret, though; Wan didn’t leave folks hanging.

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

Director: James Wan
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey
Release date: September 13, 2013

Maybe this is judging the payoff too heavily, but there’s something about how Chapter 2 delivers on the story that was told in the first film that puts it heads above the rest of the entries in the franchise.

Picking up immediately where Insidious left off, Chapter 2 fills in the gaps left in the first film. We learn that Elise treated Josh in 1986, suppressing his astral projection abilities after he encountered evil in his home. We also learn about the entity—the Bride in Black—that inhabits Josh; he’s really Parker Crane, a serial killer the spirit of his mother told him to dress as a woman. Yeah, that may be heavy, but it made the scenes where Wilson is stark-raving mad and murderous way more intense.

They also did a great job calling back to earlier moments in the film, like when they entered The Further and were in the 1986 investigation of a young Josh, who we realize was instructing the adult Josh to a room he needed to be in. Or when we see an entire sequence from Insidious play out, where we see how Josh in The Further could impact the real world. It’s kind of heady, but a great look at how time in The Further works.

Was it dope that Dalton and Josh could use their abilities together? Hell yeah! Was it dope when their memories were suppressed again? Hell nah, although how else would we get to The Red Door?! It was clearly a sign of things to come, though, as the film ended with Elise’s spirit encountering new entities in The Further, leading to the full-on Elise-era of Insidious.

Guess you now understand how time works in The Further, don’t you?