After five years, “Insidious” is taking fans to the Further once more with “Insidious: The Red Door.” The latest installment is now available on Digital, which means now is the perfect time to catch up on the creepy franchise (or experience it for the first time). Beginning with “Insidious” in 2010, the horror films center around a family who finds themselves haunted by demons from another realm, along with the people who try to help them.
Created by horror veteran Leigh Whannell (who also created the “Saw” franchise along with James Wan), each installment of the “Insidious” takes viewers deeper into the Further, a nightmarish dimension populated by tortured spirits and ruled over by a malevolent demon. “The Red Door” will be the fifth installment in the franchise, and will once again focus on the Lambert family, with Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, and Ty Simpkins all reprising their roles from the first two films.
However, like many long-running franchises nowadays, the films in the “Insidious” franchise jump around in time, leaving viewers with a couple of choices in how they want to experience the films: release date order, or chronological order. Here’s how to do both.
Release Order
- Insidious (2011)
- Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
- Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
- Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
- Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
If you’ve been watching the “Insidious” movies from the beginning, this is how you probably experienced them. “Insidious” was released in 2010 and followed parents Josh (Wilson) and Renai (Byrne) Lambert as they try to understand what’s happening to their son, Dalton (Simpkins), after he slips into a coma and astral projects into the Further. As he sleeps, the Lamberts start experiencing unsettling supernatural phenomena. Although they first assume their house is haunted, they eventually realize that it’s actually Dalton himself being used as a conduit for the spirits in the Further.
Released in 2013, “Insidious: Chapter 2” picks up where the first film leaves off, exploring Josh’s childhood and also moving through the aftermath of Dalton’s trip to the Further in “Insidious.” This time around, it’s Josh who is the target of the entities from the Further, and it’s up to Renai and Josh’s mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) to figure out how to save him and the rest of the family.
Next up is “Insidious: Chapter 3,” which came out in 2015. This film is a prequel to the first film, and centers around a new family, the Brenners, as they deal with the haunting of their teenage daughter, Quinn (Stefanie Scott) three years prior to Dalton Lambert’s coma. Her father, Sean (Dermot Mulroney), works with Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye)—the same demonologist who tries to help the Lamberts in “Insidious”—to get to the bottom of his daughter’s problems.
“Insidious: The Last Key” followed in 2018, this time centered entirely around Elise Rainier, including flashbacks to when she was young (played by Ava Kolker as a child, and Hana Hayes as a teenager). In “The Last Key,” we learn about Elise’s first encounter with demons, and also about her experiences immediately prior to “Insidious.” While there is still much of Elise’s story we haven’t witnessed, “The Last Key” gives some insight into her interest in demonology, along with some of the personal demons she’s still working to overcome.
The newest installment, “The Red Door,” is expected to be a direct sequel to “Chapter 2,” once more centering the Lambert family as Dalton prepares to go to college… and maybe takes a few unintended guests along with him.
Chronological Order
- Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
- Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
- Insidious (2011)
- Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
- Insidious: The Red Door (2023)
If you’d rather watch the “Insidious” franchise in chronological order, there are actually a couple of ways to do that. One would be to watch them according to the earliest scene in each film, although that could wind up being a little confusing. The other would be to order them based on when the main narrative of the film takes place, which probably makes more narrative sense — and is the order listed above.
However, if you want to go by the earliest-set scene in each film, you’d start with “The Last Key,” based on Elise’s backstory in 1953. Next would be “Chapter 2,” thanks to the flashback of Elise helping a young Josh in 1986. Then you’d do “Chapter 3,” which is set mostly in 2007, then “Insidious” in 2010, and finally “The Red Door,” which is set in 2021 despite its 2023 release date.
However, the more reasonable chronological watch order would likely be to start with “Chapter 3” in 2007, then move on to “The Last Key” in 2010, followed by “Insidious” in 2011 and “Chapter 2” following directly after. Next up would come “The Red Door” to close out the story of the Lambert family… unless, of course, the Further isn’t quite done with them yet.
Finally, there’s the matter of “Thread: An Insidious Tale.” Announced in May 2023, the upcoming film will star Mandy Moore and Kumail Nanjiani as a couple who uses a spell to go back in time and save their daughter from dying — with disastrous consequences. The film is said to be an offshoot of the main “Insidious” series rather than a direct continuation of the franchise, which means we don’t yet know where it will fit into the “Insidious” timeline.