“I love horror. It’s fun for me.”
Says Patrick Wilson, who returns as Josh Lambert in his directorial debut Insidious: The Red Door, which brings the Lambert family’s terrifying saga to an epic conclusion. The final chapter of the blockbuster horror franchise opens exclusively in cinemas July 5.
Watch the film’s trailer at
In the film, the horror franchise’s original cast – including Wilson, Ty Simpkins and Rose Byrne – returns. 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.
“It’s exciting to play an ordinary character in an extraordinary situation,” says Wilson. “A very normal family – and all of a sudden, they have this crazy trauma! He travels into another dimension and has to fight a demon! It can go as crazy as you want it to, if you start from a place of real emotion. I like pushing myself, whether it’s physically, or emotionally, or creating tension, or finding humor in the dark moments, or darkness in the light moments.”
That idea – balancing light and dark – became the central theme of his directorial debut, according to Wilson. “Dealing with trauma, dealing with light and dark and the balance, and the art of the story – all of these seeds that were sown in the first film that now come to fruition,” he says. “Some blossom, some ripen, and some spoil.”
Wilson knew that directing his first film would be a learning experience – as it should be. Referring to all the different directors he’s worked with he says, “They’re so different in the way they approach it, and there’s no one way. That’s what I love about this business, and what I love about directors. There are so many ways to get your film made. So my goal was to capitalize on my strengths, what excites me, what interests me, what I’m passionate about. I don’t quite know my style – I think I’m still finding my own style. I’m not so bold to think I’ve figured it out. I’m learning – I’m in a constant state of learning.”
“Patrick had a very strong vision for the film and knew the direction of where he wanted to take this Lambert family saga,” says producer James Wan, who was also Wilson’s director in the first two Insidious films, as well as in Conjuring and Aquaman. “That made me really excited, since he’d be returning to play the character he played in the first two films. He’s building on the world we had created together whilst adding his own take to it. We talked and discussed about a wide range of things – story, characters, tone, scares, new villain, furthering the Further.”
