Insidious: The Red Doorhas made some waves at the box office. As this list is being written, the movie has crossed 122 million globally in ticket sales. The film’s fifth installment is directed by one of its stars, Patrick Wilson, and is proof to never bet against horror movies, even if it’s up against big blockbusters likeIndiana JonesandMission Impossible.
For the last decade, theInsidiousmovies have scared audiences far and wide. Every film has been loaded with jump scares that are earned and aren’t cheap. Making it one of the standout supernatural films of this generation. With all its acolytes, It’s good to explore other films to pair with the franchise’s newest installment. Here are ten movies to track down and watch if you lovedInsidious: The Red Door.
I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)
Netflix is often criticized for itslack of horror films on it.But some of itsoriginal horror filmsstand out and push back against that critique.I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the Housepaces a little slower thanInsidious: The Red Door, but does well at delivering on its atmosphere. Directed by Oz Perkins, the son of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins. The film’s ghost story element dives into what actually makes a house haunted by an entity, something the entireInsidiousfranchise does quite well.
Related:Insidious: The Red Door Scariest Moments, Ranked
The 2018 Hindi-language film is a high-concept horror film that has a mythological story as its backdrop.Tumbbadtakes place in 19th-century India and is about a father and his son who encounter a demonic entity while they are searching an old, decaying castle. Its scares and tone line up perfectly with any of the Insidious films, but the father-son story works well, especially withThe Red Door.
Related:15 Bollywood Movies That Influenced The West
Mama (2013)
Mamais a 2013 American film based on the Argentinian short film of the same name. It’s about a couple who take in their two nieces after a traumatic experience. They soon realize that a supernatural force has latched onto them; it’s a ghostly figure that the girls call Mama. The film is executive produced byGuillermo Del Toroand definitely has his fingerprints all over it, despite not directing the movie.
It’s another family being haunted horror story that deals with traumatic pasts that infect the present. The plot is very surface-level, but the scares can play really well for any horror fan.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Doctor SleepandInsidious: The Red Doorboth tackle a similar theme: suppressing one’s trauma. In this sequel toThe Shining, set years later, Danny Torrance is now a man struggling with his personal demons and the events that happened when he was a child at the Overlook Hotel. He locks all this away in his mind and never acknowledges it, just like Dalton, who is all grown up and away at college inThe Red Door.
Both films do a brilliant job of telling how ghosts of the past can take shape into freighting entities that will haunt you until you decide to take a stance against them.
Related:7 Reasons Doctor Sleep is a Better Stephen King Adaptation Than The Shining
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
One theme that is always overlooked inA Nightmare on Elm Streetis how children inherit the issues of their parents. The classic slasher film deals with serial killerFreddy Kruger coming back to haunt a groupof teenagers whose parents, years earlier, committed mob justice against the man to protect their children from harm. The newest installment ofInsidioushas a lot of those themes at the center of the movie.
It also must be mentioned that, like Nancy inNightmare on Elm Street, Dalton is now somewhat of a ‘final boy’ inThe Red Dooras he takes on the ghosts and ghouls of his family’s past.
The Black Phone (2022)
IfInsidiousdid anything well, it showed the dangers of adolescence. From the first one, where a ghostly entity appears near a crib in the Lambert’s home, to the newest installment, where Dalton finds himself in the further.The Black Phoneis one of the most recent films (as well as short stories) that also does just that.
From vicious school bullies to The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), who kidnaps a young Finney Blake,The Black PhoneandInsidious: The Red Doordeal with overcoming the horrors of real life and what can come in the afterlife.
Lights Out (2016)
Lights Out, like theInsidiousfranchise, was another standout horror film of the 2010s. With brilliant jump scares to keep you up at night,Lights Outis unforgettable in the atmosphere it sets. LikeInsidious: The Red Door,it deals with the exploration of the unexplained things that scared you as a child and came back to haunt you as an adult.
Teresa Palmer plays Rebecca, a woman who was haunted by strange figures when the lights went out as a kid, and learns her younger brother is experiencing the same issue. And all of this is tied to something involving her family.
The Mimic (2017)
The Mimicis a 2017 South Korean film that has a lot in common with just about all theInsidiousfilms, as it deals with a family in danger from a sinister force. The film is about a woman who encounters a little girl out in the woods. She decides to take her in and help her out, but in doing so, she and her family learn that this child is something that wants to do harm to her family.
Yet another South Korean horror film that can leave you up at night, and it even leaves you wanting to hug your loved ones tighter, because you just don’t know what kind of evil is out there.
Related:Must Watch Korean Horror Movies
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Rosemary’s Babymay not be the first film you think of after seeing the newInsidiousfilm. But after some careful thought, you will see a lot of parallels. The 1968 Roman Polanski-directed classic centers around a couple who move to a New York City apartment building, and immediately the vibe of the place is off. Once pregnant, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) becomes very isolated from the rest of the world and has visions that feel dreamlike but could potentially be real, as she believes that her child is not of this world.
Both films deal with a devil-like being or force that can latch onto any of us as we unravel our own trauma.
Poltergeist (1982)
It always goes back toPoltergeist. A film released in 1982 that many directors reference when crafting a haunted house movie.Poltergeisthas scares that vary from a character walking past a closed door one minute, then walking past it a moment later, finding it open. To outlandish jump scares that you never forget. Both films also have psychic investigators who appear in them.
They both are about normal-looking families who are attacked by demonic spirits, and they are not sure at first why. James Wan has gone on record saying that when craftingInsidious, he was abig admirer ofPoltergeistand the influence it had on him and the genre as a whole.
