‘Insidious: The Red Door’ Original cast reunites for conclusion to terrifying saga

CEBU, Philippines — What has the Lambert family been up to since we last saw them in “Insidious: Chapter 2”?

When last we met the Lambert family, astral projectors Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Dalton (Ty Simpkins) had survived multiple trips into The Further. Dalton had been kidnapped by a demon… Josh had rescued him, only to be trapped in The Further while a ghost possesses his body in our world. That ghost, in Josh’s body, had rampaged through his house, trying to kill his family…and Dalton had ventured back into The Further to find his real father and bring him back.

“After the second film, I felt there was nothing more to be done or said or explored with the Lambert family,” says Wilson who, aside from returning as Josh Lambert, also marks his directorial debut with “Insidious: The Red Door”, opening across Philippine cinemas July 5.

“I had saved my son, been saved myself, been possessed; I had gone through just about everything you can do in a horror movie. The biggest question that I asked, and that I wanted to pose to the audience, was what happens to a family after ten years, when you’ve been hypnotized in order to forget your family trauma? In hindsight, that’s probably not the healthiest way to deal with trauma: ‘It didn’t happen, you’ll forget this.’ I wanted to unpack that.”

In “Insidious: The Red Door”, the epic conclusion to the terrifying saga of the Lambert family, the story picks up as the original cast reunites for the third chapter in the family’s tale, and fifth and final film in the blockbuster horror franchise, following two prequels. Ten years after the events of the second film, Josh and Renai (Rose Byrne) have divorced, as Josh struggles to piece together a life that seems to have major holes he can’t fill. Dalton, now a young adult, is heading off to an East Coast art college, and has a strained relationship with his father.

“It’s stilted because of the events that have happened, and they don’t really know why,” says Wilson. “They have missing chapters – holes in their memory – and there’s resentment from Dalton’s side. Two men who can’t quite express their desire to make their relationship better because they don’t know where it went wrong. And yet they’re tied together in more ways than one, and ‘Insidious’ fans know exactly what that means.”

“I love the fact that we were able to bring the original cast back together to bring the Lamberts’ saga to a close,” says producer Jason Blum. “Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, of course, but also Ty Simpkins, Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson and Andrew Astor. Getting to see how the cast has aged – especially the actors who were children and have grown into young men – underscores the heart of the story for me: that this is a family finding their way as they move through their lives.”

Reuniting the cast became a central pivot point of Wilson’s direction of the film – his reason for wanting to do it, and later, a driving force in his vision for the film.

Says Wilson, “I wanted the movie to feel like it closes out the Lambert trilogy – if you’ve seen the first two movies, you get a feeling for them – but I’ve shown it to people who know nothing of the ‘Insidious’ franchise, and I know, you don’t need to see those movies to understand.”

Aside from reuniting the original cast, original producers James Wan and Jason Blum are also back.

“Alongside James Wan, we went to some crazy places in the ‘Insidious’ movies, but I think the reason they connected was that we started with a loving family,” says Blum. “Just about everyone who starts a family does it with the best of intentions, hoping to create that warm, comforting, safe space with the people we love – and then, just about all of us discover that most families are complicated in one way or another. For some of us, that means years of therapy. For others, it means fighting a demon in a nightmare dreamscape.”

Blum has produced lucrative, iconic, genre franchises like “Halloween”, “Paranormal Activity”, “Insidious”, “Happy Death Day”, “Sinister”, and “The Purge”, among several others. Most recently, Blumhouse released the box office juggernauts “M3GAN” and “The Black Phone.”

Meanwhile, Wan is regarded as one of the most creative filmmakers working today. Breaking into the international film world as co-creator of “Saw”, Wan is a visionary with a dynamic career directing both studio and independent films in genres including horror, superhero, action, thriller, adventure, mystery, and fantasy. He is a world-builder pioneering no fewer than six franchises – “Aquaman”, “The Conjuring”, “Insidious”, “Saw”, “Mortal Kombat” – and “M3GAN”, the sci-fi horror/thriller that became an instant global hit and began the “M3GAN” universe, all of which captured the zeitgeist of the moment around the world.

In “Insidious: The Red Door”, to put their demons to rest once and for all, Josh (Wilson) and a college-aged Dalton (Simpkins) must go deeper into The Further than ever before, facing their family’s dark past and a host of new and more horrifying terrors that lurk behind the red door.

Rose Byrne and Andrew Astor return, while Sinclair Daniel and Hiam Abbass also star. Produced by Jason Blum, Oren Peli, James Wan and Leigh Whannell. — (FREEMAN)