Insidious 5 Changes Title, Potentially Teasing One Demon's Return

Sony Pictures has announced that the fifth film in the Insidious series has changed its title ahead of a summer release. Originally announced as Insidious: Fear the Dark, the movie will now be title Insidious: The Red Door when it's released. Series star Patrick Wilson returns to the franchise, playing his character from the first two movies once again and reuniting with several other cast members. Wilson also stepped behind the camera for the movie as well, marking his directorial debut after two decades in Hollywood. Insidious: The Red Door is scheduled to debut in theaters on July 7, 2023.

Fans of the Insidious movies will know what "The Red Door" means immediately, but for newcomers it's pretty simple. Unlike some horror franchises, the lore of Inisdious is pretty firmly established. Central to it is that ghosts, spirits, and demons are real, and they all inhabit an ethereal plane called The Further that exists as a mirror version of our world (naturally one that just looks spooky). Red Doors are key places in The Further as they lead to the lair of the main antagonists in the first two movies. Considering the plot of the new movie, and the new title for the sequel, it seems very likely that the main demon from the original film (or perhaps others from the series) could be making a return.

The Insidious series began with 2010's original movie, starring Wilson as Josh Lambert and young actor Ty Simpkins as his son Dalton, telling the tale of their family being haunted by an unknown deity. For Insidious: Fear the Dark, the new movie takes place ten years after the first two films, and sees the pair reprising their roles. In the new movie Josh will drop off his son at an idyllic, ivy-covered university. However, Dalton's college dream becomes a nightmare when the repressed demons of his past suddenly return to haunt them both.  

"I'm super excited for what Patrick's doing with Insidious," director James Wan, who helmed the first two Insidious movies, previously told THR. "One of the things I love best about working with Patrick Wilson is that we don't actually talk about the movie that we are making on set. We geek out about all the movies that we loved growing up, because Patrick and I are roughly of the same generation. We're just constantly geeking out about John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China and all these movies. Patrick reminds me a little bit of Leigh Whannell in that they are not just actors slash whatever; they are filmmakers as well. They're film buffs, and being film buffs, they look at acting from the point of view of what the final film will be like. And so that actually helps inform them as filmmakers. So I'm always very excited when people like Leigh Whannell and Patrick Wilson want to jump behind the camera."