Between giving horror audiences Saw and The Conjuring, Australian writer-director team Leigh Whannel and James Wan also created Insidious. This supernatural franchise has perpetually felt like the neglected middle child of their iconic film series, never quite generating the dedicated fan base of Saw nor the enormous commercial success of The Conjuring and its various sequels and spin-offs. Despite this, Insidious has trucked along quite impressively over the past decade-and-a-half; a fifth sequel, shot in my home city of Melbourne, is due in cinemas in 2026.

The first film, produced back in 2010, follows the ill-fated Lambert family. Eldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) falls over exploring the attic and winds up in a coma. When his parents (played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) start experiencing frightening supernatural phenomena, they move house – only to find the phenomena follows them. Grandmother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) calls in psychic Elise Rainer (Lin Shaye) – a medium with an unexpected connection to Dalton’s father Josh (Wilson).

I think one of the reasons Insidious has never quite reached the popularity (or noteriety) of the other Wan-Whannel creations is the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink scattershot approach it takes to genre. Saw and The Conjuring are much easier to define: one is about people being tortured and killed inside elaborate grand guignol traps, and the other is about demon hunters in the 1970s. Conversely Insidious has ghosts and demons, as well as astral projection, psychic phenomena, and trips to surreal afterlives filled with the dead. Its creative debt to Spielberg and Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982) is obvious, but honestly Spielberg and Hooper never in their lives threw so many ideas into the one screenplay. What is Insidious about? Honestly the most succinct answer is that it is about 101 minutes.

James Wan has always had a strong hand at visualising moments of horror, and he achieves some wonderful imagery here. In many ways his stylistic choices, which seem informed by a lot of 1970s horror films, prefigure what he does more overtly in 2013’s The Conjuring.

A decent cast is so important to making a horror film succeed, since it is their reaction to the scary moments that helps guide the audience’s response. There is excellent work done here by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, and particularly by young Ty Simpkins – who would later make an impact in the likes of Iron Man 3 and Jurassic World. Lin Shaye is arguably less effective, and perhaps too understated. Australians Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson – both alumnus of early morning variety TV show Recovery – are a weirdly idiosyncratic addition. There is that underlying sense that perhaps they are enjoying their roles slightly more than the audience are.

Insidious is ultimately not as iconic or impactful as other Whannell-Wan productions. It feels slightly off-kilter as well, almost as if it shouldn’t work as well as it does. Work it does, however, to an entertaining extent. How it has expanded to incorporate five sequels will require watching those sequels.