It’s still incredibly terrifying 13 years later.
Insidious: The Red Door, the fifth instalment in the supernatural horror series, lands in cinemas this week.
The original arrived in 2010 and told the story of married couple Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) who move into a new home with their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and become plagued by demonic entities.
However, while that set-up suggested the movie would be akin to a standard haunted house horror, the Lambert family’s plight turned out to more complicated because – as the film’s tagline ominously stated – “it’s not the house that’s haunted”.
Fast forward 13 years later and Insidious: The Red Door sees Wilson stepping the behind the camera, following in the footsteps of the original’s director James Wan. The new sequel revolves around Josh and a now in college Dalton as they struggle to vanquish the demonic entities that have haunted them for years when they resurface after a period of dormancy.
JOE’s entertainment editor Rory Cashin spoke to a number of cast and crew involved in Insidious: The Red Door ahead of its release, including Wilson. One of the questions Rory put to the actor-director related to the now infamous jump scare from the first Insidious.
If you need a reminder of the scene, you can watch it right here:
After Wilson stated that creating an effective jump scare is “all about misdirect”, JOE asked the actor-director if he knew how terrifying that moment from the original was going to be as it was being filmed. He responded:
“For me, I had no clue because, of course, I never see it because he’s behind me.
“I can tell you through talking with James over the years… I think some of the scares that he’s probably most proud of are in that first movie.
“That’s probably because when you are confined to: ‘Hey, you only have 20 something days to shoot this movie so you better be super efficient with what you’re doing and it’s not going to be R-rated, we don’t want any blood, any violence, any of this and that,’ it really forces you to do your work in camera.
“And I think some of James’ best scenes ever are in that first Insidious movie because they’re very practical, they really toy with your emotions, they toy with the misdirect.
“In that scene, it’s Barbara Hershey talking about seeing The Visitor so you’re in her world and you keep coming back to the same shot of me: ‘Oh right’. And then you’re kind of like: ‘right… Oh God!’. You just don’t expect it.”
Insidious: The Red Door is in cinemas Friday, 7 July. You can check out JOE’s interviews with Wilson and franchise producer Jason Blum below, as well as our interviews with the sequel’s other cast members Simpkins, Lin Shaye and Sinclair Daniel on our YouTube channel.
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