Ranking Every ‘Insidious’ Movie

James Wan came to define horror in the 2010s with his double hitter of Insidious and The Conjuring. While both became franchises, the latter was the juggernaut. Yet I’ve always preferred the Insidious films, maybe because of how improbable of a franchise it is. There’s no inbuilt, case-of-the-movie structure. They’re not following the continuing visitations of a central villain (although one demon does appear in almost all of them despite not being scary since the first). Instead, Insidious is a joy to see continue because of Lin Shaye’s heroic Elise.

What a strange, delightful and rare thing, to have a horror franchise, a mythology, built around an older woman. And not a creepy old crone but a nice, sweet old lady helping face down terrors, capably, with a smile on her face. Even more shocking is the fact she dies in the first film! Elise is a horror Obi-Wan Kenobi, dying in her first appearance but surviving through prequels and ghostly appearances. Long may she continue. But her sidekicks, Specs and Tucker, they can die already. And the films often fall apart in the third act, usually culminating in elderly Lin Shaye beating a demon to death, which is neither the actress’s or character’s strong suit.

Part of the charm of Insidious is that it seems like the filmmakers are continuously surprised they are making another one. The low budget original spawning prequels and sequels and inbetweenquels, everyone making it up as they go, which can cause issues but also keeps the franchise from becoming truly stale, always on its toes. It manages, apart from one film, to be consistently scary, mixing jump scares with creeping dread, and I’m drawn to its embrace of sci-fi ideas mixed with the horror. Characters astral project into a realm known as the Further, which is just as much another dimension as it is an afterlife. The series has managed to survive, from pioneering origins in 2010 to producing one of its better efforts in 2026, proving it still has plenty of life. Below I rank all six Insidious movies.

6) Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

The issue with Insidious: The Red Door is that the writer and the director seem to be trying to make different movies. It’s written to mimic the past films in the series, a horror film, yet actor Patrick Wilson finds himself in the director’s chair making a very actorly movie. He’s clearly interested in the performances, seeking to have the film reach higher ground than just jump scares. His striving for drama pushes the film more towards melodrama than horror.

It’s a rather dour, dull affair. Outside of a good sequence in an MRI machine, it fails to be scary. The directing choices eliminate the horror. There’s no depth of field at all, every shot has awful, blurred backgrounds to plant all focus on the actor, which sucks for this type of film because the audience is supposed to be scanning the background continuously for something spooky. Now, even if there was anything there, you wouldn’t be able to see it. The ‘dark’ sequences are also overly lit. Dalton is supposed to be scared of the dark but that’s not a problem because it’s never truly dark.

Picking up nine years after Chapter 2, The Red Door is trying to bring closure to a story already closed. I appreciate some of what it is trying to do but there’s just not enough there for another film. It’s about fathers and sons, reckoning with the past even if they don’t quite remember it, how it damaged their relationship, but both Josh and Dalton are isolated for too long. The best moments are when they are together. The problem being that it takes almost the whole movie for them to remember the events of the past films and reunite.

Josh wanders around confused for most of the film while Dalton hangs out with college roommate Chris, an insufferable ‘quirky’ character who eggs Dalton on and then is angry at him when her actions have consequences. Rose Byrne’s character Renai is in the most interesting position, remembering everything while her husband and son were able to live in blissful ignorance, but the film pays so little attention to her. I wish The Red Door was a road trip movie, Josh driving Dalton to university, conflict and revelations along the way. It’s them who are haunted, not a specific place, so each night they find themselves in a different creepy hotel. Instead, it’s such a stagnant story.

Once both characters remember everything the film has no idea what to do. It rushes towards a conclusion, reintroducing the red Lipstick-Face Demon but never making him scary or apparently wanting anything in particular. Insidious films always have a third act problem. The problem here is that I’m not sure it even has one. As I was watching it suddenly hit me, oh I guess that was the final confrontation, and then it just ends.

5) Insidious: The Last Key (2018)

The Last Key is an okay instalment of the franchise made frustrating because there’s real potential there. It does some interesting things amongst its numerous issues. Firstly, it’s the only film in the series where Elise is truly the protagonist. I think the film is probably Lin Shaye’s best in the role, she’s great, although the issue with Elise as the lead is that the film has to ‘depower’ her to make it work. She’s usually the voice of knowledge yet here she’s stumbling in the dark, unable to see the ghosts that others can.

Elise goes home, and somehow her childhood home is exactly the same 60 years later, including some of furnishings and bumping into her brother who conveniently still lives nearby. I’m willing to buy into these contrivances because I like ideas here: a demon possesses the residents of the house, turning them into serial killers. It allows the film to focus on human villains for a change, like Elise’s abusive father, and also the most inhuman demon of the series. I think Keyface is the best villain of the franchise. The design is great and I love his powers of inserting a key into someone’s throat to silence them, and another into their heart to kill them. Yet, because it acts through human proxies, we barely see it. Keyface is largely wasted in an abrupt third act, taking advantage of the prison next door to the house for all of 3 minutes.

I really like the reveal that the new homeowner is a serial killer, and the creepy girl Elise has been seeing isn’t a ghost but an alive captive. It’s a great twist, the film apparently kicking into gear, but then the killer himself is killed in the next scene. And not ten minutes later the film does the exact same ‘not a ghost’ twist again. Clearly writer Leigh Whannell had the idea for this twist but not a story to go with it. Despite some cool ideas, you can feel Whannel begin to run on empty with this film, the last he writes, repeating ideas, such as the main character’s ghost mother coming to save the day at the end, which also happened in the previous film, Chapter 3.

That previous film was also a prequel to the original, doing a decent job of setting up that story. The Last Key is an attempt to squeeze another story in that gap despite not really fitting. To get it done, Elise essentially goes on the same emotional journey, although this time getting over her father’s abuse rather than husband’s death. Perhaps it would have worked better if her initial decree of “I’m doing this alone” was stuck to. Instead, Specs and Tucker (with Angus Sampson wearing the worst hair extensions I’ve ever seen) once again tag along for some irritating hijinks. Elise’s niece Imogen also appears, sharing her aunt’s clairvoyant abilities, but is painfully bland. And finally, the film ties into the original using time travel shenanigans to show Elise walking in on Dalton in the attic, leaving the red door open when she leaves. I hate the implication that Elise is to blame for letting the Lipstick-Face Demon in by mistake.

4) Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)

Very much of a piece/in equal standing as The Last Key, Chapter 3 just beats it to the title of ‘best of the prequels’ by being a solid, standalone ghost story. Honestly, I think the worst parts are when it ties into the Insidious lore. As its own horror side-story I think it’s pretty good. Leigh Whannel proves himself a good director and there are some well-directed scares and sequences. Rather than a spooky house like all other franchise instalments, Chapter 3 taps into the fear of living in an apartment building, where anyone or anything could be living above, below, or either side of you. Mix that with a protagonist in a wheelchair, unable to run, and it’s a great setup for a fun scary movie.

Protagonist Quinn wants to contact her dead mother but ends up haunted by something else entirely. The creepy dying old man ghost is fine, I guess, although the last film already had one of those. The waving man at the start is more effective. I do wish the film was a little deeper. It has all the elements of a 2010s ‘elevated’ horror film where everything is a meditation on grief, but it never quite comes together. The themes and ideas are there, floating around, like a demon who makes you kill yourself, but they never land.

It’s the Insidious stuff that falls flat. We catch up with Elise when she’s a recluse, depressed over her husband’s suicide, having closed herself off from the force. It’s an understandable choice of conflict and journey for her, but a familiar and disappointing one. The best thing about the character in the original is that she faces everything with an incongruously upbeat smile. She’s far from that Elise here.

Chapter 3 also meddles with the canon as laid out in the previous film. Elise calls the villain a “demon” when he’s a human ghost, which are explained as different entities entirely. She says that the Further is essentially Hell when it the last film it was a purgatory everyone passes through. And I don’t like the time travel antics that mean Elise is warned about her death. Prequels are tough in a franchise where Elise comments that she’s never faced anything so malevolent in the original film. It means anything she encounters before then isn’t that bad. The film also features perhaps the worst 30 seconds of the franchise, where Elise gets into a Matrix-style fight with the Bride in Black, complete with a “come on, bitch”.

3) Insidious (2010)

The first half of Insidious is great, the second has its problems. The franchise has never been scarier than that first hour. There are some great individual scares but it’s the overall mood that’s most impressive, forcing the audience into an apprehensive state, ready to be scared. This time I was watching in a well-lit room on a TV, and it still made me uncomfortable. The cinema experience was something else. The techniques used now seem a little dated or familiar, such as director James Wan’s constant slow push-ins, the “eerie soundscape (as the subtitles put it), the very 2010 colour timing, and excessive musical stings accompanying, or causing, the scares. I didn’t even see the first jump scare; I just heard it.

Rose Byrne is so good at playing tired and frazzled, just watch If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and she’s an excellent lead for the first half. I like the “we are legion” approach to possession, with multiple ghosts appearing, and the twist that the kid is haunted, not the house, is great. Usually in these stories they’d reveal it’s not the house so they wouldn’t move. I love that they do still move house and that the film is split across two homes, allowing for two distinct playgrounds for the ghosts throughout the film. It keeps it fresh.

Insidious initially seems to be about the abject horror of having to care for three young children by yourself, but then two of the kids disappear entirely and Rose Byrne’s Renai is backgrounded. The second half of the film, once that brilliant, beloved jump scare happens, falls apart for me. I wish Renai still had something to do but the twist is that dad Josh is the key to everything. He goes from useless to the focus, with Renai telling him, “You’ve always been stronger than me”. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Lin Shaye as Elise is a fun presence but Specs and Tucker feel like they are from a different movie entirely, more so here than in the sequels. The film’s low budget is both the best and worst thing about it. It keeps the film feeling real but also make things look very silly if the spooky atmosphere drops. The gasmask séance scene is laughable. The Further is a cool concept but will be successfully iterated on after it’s first appearance here. The scary figures in this film are the ones standing in the dark, barely moving or seen, not the CGI wall-climbing demon or the ghost wearing a duster that Josh gets in a fist fight with. And I’m also someone who unironically listens to and enjoys Tiny Tim so Tiptoe Through the Tulips doesn’t freak me out like some people.

2) Insidious: Out of the Further (2026)

Yes, I’m shocked too. The sixth film in the franchise is better than the original. My unexpected, very positive reaction to Out of the Further is what made me want to revisit each film in the series and put this ranking together. Bringing in a new writer/director in Jacob Chase was the right decision. After The Red Door went over old ground, Out of the Further feels fresh again. There are new ideas and takes on the story. An outside perceptive, rather than the same on and off screen talent, works wonders. The concept of couriers, people who can ferry objects and beings between dimensions, is great. As are the human antagonist acolytes, who are a threat in both the real world and the Further, bringing a different kind of horror to both.

It’s an evolved take on Insidious, pushing what the series can do. At times it feels close to a Hellraiser movie, or a Nightmare on Elm Street entry, but never completely losing its identity. In fact, it redoes the generational trauma conflict of The Red Door but this time much more successfully. The film has plenty of the same type of horror, the trademark jump scares and shadowy figures, but it embraces new avenues, too. There are icky gross-out moments and a very effective claustrophobic sequence. It embraces hagsploitation/“aren’t old people scary” and understands that dentists are the scariest place on Earth (even though the evil dentist needed to do more than simply drill into a tooth).

Out of the Further also has great judgement and balance with its scares. A few films deep and the franchise began being too self-aware of its jump scares. The Last Key in particular really got in its own head about where to put them, subverting each one and getting in a muddle about when to follow tropes or not. This movie knows when to subvert them (occasionally) and knows when to just deliver: to have someone show up in that dark empty space rather than appear from the side instead. It doesn’t tease the audience too much; just the right amount. Although there is one scare late on, where a ghost suddenly replaces a dog, which doesn’t play fair and seems to break the film’s own rules.

I was shocked by the film’s third act. In that it actually has one and it’s good. The issue however is that maybe it pushes things a little too far. Too much of an overcorrection. Sam Spruel’s cult leader character is genuinely threatening, more so than the demons, and his plan brings every villain we’ve met in the franchise into the real world. I did not see that coming, there are some great moments, but the film doesn’t quite work out what to do from there. The baddies just sort of hang around the house for ten minutes until protagonist Gemma teleports the house back to the Further –  a slightly overpowered superhero moment. So it all gets overblown by the very end, and it’s a tad overlong, but I appreciate how different it is from past endings and the heist-style set-up is great fun, tattooed oranges and all.

The film looks great. The set pieces, especially the couch fort and dentist sequences, are excellent. It finds new ways to be scary. The characters and conflict are strong. The performances are solid. Insidious: Out of the Further is a very good film, if not one that gets slightly carried away with itself in a few moments, leading to a finale more comic book-y than horror. It’s breathes new life into the franchise, proving the series can survive and thrive by branching out rather than adding another convoluted chapter to the existing story. I’d like more instalments with its sensibilities, an Insidious mixtape of new and old. And it’s use, minimal but effective, of Elise is great. Also, bonus points for finally getting rid of Specs and Tucker!

1) Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

Chapter 2 is the franchise’s strongest entry, mainly because it builds on the positives of the first film while acknowledging and improving upon its issues. The second film is essentially another additional act of the first, adding a better conclusion to the story, the one I wanted to see in the original. It doesn’t just forget that the best parts of the first film exist. Rose Byrne and the other kids are back involved, the heart of the movie’s tension.

The worst part of films like Insidious is always the beginning when the spouse of the protagonist never believes that anything spooky is happening, gaslighting their partner. Once you sit through a couple, this part of the story becomes tiresome, especially if it lasts most of the running time. Chapter 2 fixes this. Following the first film, everyone now believes Renai immediately, bypassing the tired conflict. The only person rejecting it is Josh but this time for an interesting reason: he’s purposefully hiding what’s happening because he might be possessed himself.

I didn’t like Josh in the first film and thankfully Chapter 2 lets me dislike him. It wants me to. That’s now intentionally part of the story. The conflict between husband and wife is elevated to interesting new levels. Can Josh be trusted? Is he still Renai’s husband? It’s a new personal style of horror in addition to the usual ghostly happenings. And in a fun twist, the physical version of Josh is bad while the good version is acting like a ghost, trying to reach out and warn Renai but scaring her, and us, by doing so. It’s a clever inversion. Even the early ‘fake-out’ jump scares where Josh playfully scares his kids are hinting at what’s actually going on.

But then there’s also an overlong subplot of Specs and Tucker investigating something that is barely a mystery because it was all explained already in the first film. The film, and the series, would benefit by limiting their role. Newcomer Carl is also somewhat unnecessary but his dice are a fun and unique tool in contacting the dead that the film gets some good use out of. These scenes also feature creepy VHS tapes, much better than the still photos in the first film. Seeing a blurry adult Josh standing behind his younger self in an old tape is a great moment.

The third act is a big improvement over the first film’s. We have a reason to care about what’s happening in both the real world and the Further, a conflict happening on two interconnected fronts with action in one affecting the other. The use of time travel is a nice addition, used just the right amount. We hear a jump scare but then don’t see it happen for another minute. Josh being revealed to be the ghost in the first film, banging on the door, is a fun retroactive addition. Although, I could have done without a character literally saying, “So that’s what that was about”. And the series still can’t work out a satisfying way to defeat the antagonist, with the film ending with elderly Lin Shaye unconvincingly beating a ghost to death using a rocking horse.

Chapter 2 might not reach quite the same level of creepiness as the first film but it gets damn close. The sequence in Dalton’s bedroom with the silent ghost, the voice through the can, and the legion of victims trying to warn him, is on par with the original. And I admire the balls on the filmmakers for not having the Lipstick-Face Demon appear at all. He’s the iconic image of the first film, and now the series even though he hasn’t been scary since the original, but that conflict is done. It commits to the Bride in Black, Josh’s nemesis, and is all the better for it. Chapter 2 is the only film he doesn’t appear and it’s the best in the franchise.