The newest addition to the Insidious franchise, Insidious: The Red Door, is now in theaters and fans are once again buzzing about the franchise. While The Red Door does have many positive aspects, like returning to Josh and Dalton Lambert’s story, there has been a nonstop discussion comparing the newest film to the rest of the franchise.
In order to best understand how both the critics and the fans feel about each film, it’s best to look at sources with authentic responses to the films. Rotten Tomatoes offers scores of critic ratings as well as audience reception. This makes it an invaluable tool in breaking down which films come out on top.
5 Insidious: The Last Key
Tomatometer 33% / Audience Score 50%
Insidious: The Last Key is the fourth film in the franchise. This movie elaborates more on Elise Rainier’s character by forcing her to go back to the home that she grew up in to investigate a haunting that has gone on since she was a child. While there, she discovers that the thing that killed her mother is likely also what caused her father to turn so abusive towards her and her brother.
Although this film forced Elise to confront her past demons and gave quite a bit of insight into the beloved character’s history and powers, it’s without a doubt the least liked film in the franchises. It’s standing at a 33% on the Tomatometer and general audiences weren’t much kinder about the film. With a measly 50% Audience Score, The Last Key has the worst scores in both categories in the entire franchise.
4 Insidious: The Red Door
Tomatometer 36% / Audience Score 71%
Insidious: The Red Door is an interesting case. As the newest film in the franchise and still currently in theaters, its Rotten Tomatoes score is still fluctuating frequently. The Red Door tells the story of the Lambert family many years after the events of the first two films. Josh and his son, Dalton, have been hypnotized to forget the trauma they endured during those events and now that Dalton is going to college, the past is coming back to haunt them.
The scores for this film are pretty polarizing though. As far as the Tomatometer goes, it has the second-lowest score for the entire franchise, coming it at 36%. Audiences seem to disagree with the assessment, though, because it currently has an Audience Score hovering in the low 70s. Interestingly enough, this movie currently has the highest Audience Score out of every movie in the franchise, including the original.
3 Insidious: Chapter 2
Tomatometer 39% / Audience Score 57%
Insidious: Chapter 2 is a direct sequel to 2011’s Insidious, and it follows the Lambert family through a continuing nightmare of possession. In the original film, Dalton, Josh’s son, was possessed, but in Chapter 2, Josh is the one cursed with a malevolent entity controlling his body and terrorizing his family. In retrospect, this film makes a lot of sense. Dalton inherited his ability to astral project into the Further from Josh. People who can astral project are vulnerable to the souls trapped in the Further, making them much easier to possess.
Although this film’s premise made sense and had a lot of promise, Rotten Tomatoes insists that it wasn’t well liked by critics and while fans were a little more positive, it wasn’t by much. With a 39% on the Tomatometer and a 57% Audience Score, it didn’t prove to be nearly as popular as the original, likely to the lackluster ending that focused on hypnosis as a solution.
2 Insidious: Chapter 3
Tomatometer 57% / Audience Score 51%
Insidious: Chapter 3 actually has a higher Tomatometer score than it does an Audience Score. For most of the Insidious films, the Audience Score is much more generous than the Tomatometer, but with a 57% Tomatometer, it is six points higher than the 51% Audience Score.
This could be due to a number of reasons, but the most obvious one is that Insidious: Chapter 3 has very little to do with the first two films. In fact, the Lamberts aren’t even in the movie at all. While critics seemed to appreciate that the franchise was willing to branch out, try new things, and explore other cases that Elise Rainier investigated, fans weren’t quite as enthusiastic. It’s hard to blame fans, though. Dalton and Josh being hypnotized into forgetting everything that happened in the first two movies was hardly a satisfying ending (one that The Red Door sought to remedy).
1 Insidious
Tomatometer 66% / Audience Score 62%
The original Insidious, as expected, has the highest Tomatometer rating with a reasonable 66%. Like Chapter 3, though, the Audience Score is actually slightly lower than the Tomatometer, coming in at 62%. It’s worth noting that, currently, the newest installment actually has a significantly higher Audience Score of 71%, meaning that while the original Insidious is the best performing film overall, it doesn’t actually win in every category.
Insidious first hit theaters in 2011 and instantly became a recognizable James Wan film thanks to the compelling performance of Patrick Wilson as Josh Lambert and the surprising appearance of the Lipstick-Face Demon. The original film told the story of a young boy, Dalton, who inherited the ability to astral project into a dimension called the Further from his father. This inevitably resulted in Dalton’s possession as well as the Lambert family being terrorized by the Lipstick-Face Demon throughout Chapter 2 and The Red Door.