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The Lamberts
Josh
Josh Lambert
Played By: Patrick Wilson, Garrett Ryan (young)
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: Chapter 3 note | Insidious: The Last Key note | Insidious: The Red Door
The father of the Lambert family.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: All the flashbacks to Josh's childhood only feature his mother, with his father neither seen nor mentioned. Becomes less ambiguous in Red Door, when the details of his father's abandonment (and suicide) are made known.
- And I Must Scream: Parker Crane trapped his soul in the Further so he can regain total control of his body. Josh tries all he can to communicate with the world of the living to save his family and himself.
- Demonic Possession: At the end of the first film, he is possessed by the Bride in Black, the ghost that haunted him in his childhood. The second film revolves entirely on rescuing him from the Further and prevent the Bride/Parker Crane from gaining control on his body.
- Distressed Dude: The second film has him trapped in the Further by Parker Crane as he is trying to possess his body.
- Papa Wolf: His determination to rescue his son from the Further goes as far as to remember his Astral Projection ability and venture inside a dimension full of unstable souls and demons.
- Supernatural-Proof Father: A deconstructed one. At first he acts as one, ignoring Renai's constant fear around the house and that everything has a logical explanation. Then, it is revealed that it is all indirectly caused by him, as his son inherited his Astral Projection ability, and he is the one to venture to the Further to rescue him. In the second film, he goes again to this routine though justified in that he is possessed by the Bride in Black/Parker Crane.
Renai
Renai Lambert
Played By: Rose Byrne
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: The Last Key note | Insidious: The Red Door
Josh's wife and mother of Dalton and Foster.
- Butt-Monkey: Poor, poor Renai. She has to suffer through frightening supernatural phenomenon and apparitions, her son entering a mysterious coma, Elise dying in her home, and her husband becoming possessed by a malicious spirit and attempting to kill her and her children.
- My Nayme Is: Has an uncommon spelling of the common-enough name "Renee".
Dalton
Dalton Lambert
Played By: Ty Simpkins
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: The Last Key note | Insidious: The Red Door
The son of Josh and Renai.
- And I Must Scream: Dalton is put into an unexplained coma. The reason was that his astral projection was kidnapped by the Lipstick Faced Demon and taken to the Further. It is Josh's determination that eventually rescues him from there.
- Astral Projection: Dalton has nightmares where he meets spooky undead people and a vicious demon though they are not nightmares but travelling to a dimension called the Further. This was because he inherited this ability from his father Josh.
- Creepy Child: Most of the supernatural stuff revolves around him and having an erratic behavior though he is fairly a normal kid who doesn't know what's happening. The poster of the first film has him darkened, staring at you and with glowing eyes.
- Harmfulto Minors: Not only is he captured by a demon and held for months in his personal torture chamber, but he also has to witness his possessed father trying to kill him and the rest of their family.
- Kid Hero: Ultimately the one who saves the day in the second film when he sends himself into The Further to bring back Josh's captured soul and return it to his body and expel Parker Crane.
Lorraine
Lorraine Lambert
Played By: Barbara Hershey, Jocelin Donahue (young)
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: The Last Key note | Insidious: The Red Door note
Josh's mother.
- Ascended Extra: Though she had an important role in the first film, in Chapter 2 she gets to help investigate with Specs, Tucker and Carl thanks to her previous job as a doctor in a now abandoned hospital where they're looking for clues to Parker Crane's past.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Averted. Lorraine has a good relationship with Renai, her daughter-in-law, and is willing to offer her both emotional support and practical assistance (by contacting Elise) during Dalton's coma and the events that follow. She also acts in concern for Renai and the kids' safety upon learning the nature of the second haunting is Josh being possessed to turn on his family, making sure the kids stay out of the house while they try to fix things.
The Investigators
Elise
Elise Rainer
Played By: Lin Shaye, Lindsey Seim (young)
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: Chapter 3 | Insidious: The Last Key | Insidious: The Red Door
A paranormal investigator with the gift of astrally projecting into the spiritual realm of the Further. Elise formerly worked alone, and successfully banished the Bride in Black from young Josh Lambert until the death of her husband and resurgent attacks from the Bride in Black convinced her to retire. Quinn Brenner's case brings her back in, and she teams up with ghost hunters Specs and Tucker and makes them her investigative partners as a result of the Brenner case.
- Abusive Parents: Her father beat Elise relentlessly as a child and locked her in the basement in an attempt to beat her psychic powers out of her, and emotionally abused her as well, saying that nobody would ever love someone like her. Not to mention he blamed her for the death of her mother, because a young Elise was tricked into releasing the entity that killed her.
- Beware the Nice Ones: As nice and helpful she is, at the second film's climax she brutally and violently smashes Parker Crane's mother's head in to finish Parker Crane's reign of terror.
- Big Damn Heroes: In Chapter 2, she saves Josh in The Further from the Long Haired Fiend by expelling him in the last moment.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Was violently abused by her father as a child, was tricked into releasing an entity that murdered her mother, ran away from home as a teenager, and lived happily with her husband Jack until he killed himself.
- Mandatory Unretirement: During Chapter 3, Elise has put herself in psychic retirement because an attempt to contact her dead husband attracted the attention of the Bride in Black spirit she'd dealt with before, leading to the Bride mortally endangering her every time she astrally projects. Quinn Brenner's case is enough to move her to try to help, and encouragement from Carl gives Elise back her strength, enough to banish the Bride and proceed with her work.
- My Greatest Failure: Almost says the exact phrase when she discovers that a woman she saw in her home as a teenager was not a spirit, but was actually alive and had been kept in the basement by her father. Elise thought she was a spirit and didn't save her from her father's wrath and subsequent murder.
- Never Mess with Granny: Elise is an older woman who showcases great determination and strength of character despite her struggles, and gets several moments of dominance and bravado over the evil spirits in the Further.
- Nice Girl: Elise is very easy to like. She's kind, helpful, friendly, and almost always nothing but pleasant.
- Personal Horror: In The Last Key she discovers that despite her life's goal being to help people who are afflicted with supernatural entities, she unknowingly let a woman in her house die as a teenager because she believed her to be a spirit and didn't save her from being murdered by her father.
Tucker and Specs
Tucker and Specs
Played By: Angus Sampson (Tucker) & Leigh Wannell (Specs)
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: Chapter 3 | Insidious: The Last Key | Insidious: The Red Door
Elise's two faithful assistants, formerly independent ghost hunters and online creators who never dealt with things all that serious until the Quinn Brenner case, which sees them assisting Elise and becoming her investigative partners.
- Badass Adorable: Specs can be seen as this, because even though he's socially awkward, wears cute pajamas, and loves comic books, he also can be stealthy when need be, and killed Ted Garza in The Last Key in self-defense by dropping a heavy armoire on top of him.
- Coordinated Clothes: Specs and Tucker sport matching white button down shirts and black ties, which becomes their signature investigation wear after Elise encourages them to dress up a little for the job.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Tucker and Specs are never seen apart from each other for any extended period of time, always arriving as a duo and carrying out investigations as a team. They're clearly a package deal.
- Killing in Self-Defense: Specs was forced to kill Ted Garza in The Last Key when he had locked Elise, Tucker and the captive girl in the basement and came after Specs in a dark house with a loaded gun. Specs evaded him and managed to hit him from behind and push an armoire on top of him.
- Plucky Comic Relief: In a series of supernatural horror films about malicious ghosts and terrifying demons, most of their appearances appease the audience with a couple of quirky moments.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Despite apparently being great friends, the two are constantly bickering with each other, each convinced that the other is less essential to the operation, or otherwise more embarrassing.
Carl
Carl
Played By: Steve Coulter, Hank Harris (young)
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: The Red Door
An old friend of Elise and a fellow investigator.
- Not Quite Dead: When he's injured by Parker Crane in Josh's body, he assumes he's died when he meets up with Josh and Elise in The Further. Elise tells him to return to the world of the living when she hugs him and feels his heart still beating..
The Further
Lipstick-Face Demon
Lipstick-Face Demon
Played By: Joseph Bishara
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 3 | Insidious: The Last Key | Insidious: The Red Door
A vicious demon who desires to possess Dalton Lambert for his own purposes and traps him in the Further.
- Big Bad: The main antagonist for the first film. He puts Dalton into a coma and wishes to gain control of his body.
- Big Red Devil: Not entirely red (only part of his face hence the meaningful name) as he is covered in black fur. But yes, he follows a standard demonic design with goat-hoofed legs and long tail with an arrow-shaped end.
- Final Boss: Served as the final installment.
- Makeup Is Evil: The demon’s face is not actually red. Per his name, he smears lipstick on his face. According to James Wan it is the demon’s twisted attempt at being appealing to children, like a clown.
- Monster Delay: Subverted. His first appearance is a shadowed figure seen by Lorraine in Dalton's room. As soon as she finishes to tell Josh and Renai about the encounter, the demon's face appears behind Josh in the first film's well known Jump Scare.
The Bride in Black
The Bride in Black
Played By: Tom Fitzpatrick, Philip Friedman (Insidious), Tyler Griffin (young)
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2 | Insidious: Chapter 3 | Insidious: The Red Door note
The ghost of an old woman that haunted Josh Lambert in his childhood.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: His Abusive Mom's raising of him.
- Big Bad: The villain of the second film along with his mother. He attempts to possess Josh to regain his lost childhood.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Parker Crane was forced by his mother to act and dress as a girl as a child, among other forms of abuse. This trauma led Parker to become an unstable murderer who wore a black dress while acting out his killings on women.
- Evil Old Folks: The Bride continued killing into his old age.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Bride plays a more major and actively antagonistic role in the first three films. Though the Lipstick-Faced Demon is the primary threat in Chapter 1, and appears sporadically throughout the series, it is The Bride who dominates the films. The Bride in Black winds up “winning” in the first film’s stinger ending, becomes the primary antagonist in the second film, and terrorizes Elise throughout in Chapter 3, functioning as a secondary antagonist (and Elise implies she has stalked her in The Further for years).
- Groin Attack: Parker Crane was sent to the hospital after he attempted to castrate himself.
- Tragic Monster: The Bride in Black was actually Parker Crane, a crossdressing killer til his elder days who had an abusive monstruous mother that forced him to dress and act like a girl and would physically abuse him when he stood up for himself. The intense trauma made him a murderer of women. In his afterlife he wanted to live the childhood as a young boy that was taken away from him by possessing a young Josh Lambert.
- Wight in a Wedding Dress: Their black dress is purposefully meant to evoke this.
The Woman in White
The Woman in White
Played By: Danielle Bisutti
Appearances: Insidious: Chapter 2
The ghost of a violent woman living in Lorraine's house.
- Abusive Parents: Both psychologically and physically. She forced her son Parker to act and dress as a girl named Marilyn and any signs of Parker trying to be himself would met with severe verbal and physical abuse.
- Asshole Victim: Elise smashing her head in with a rocking horse is one satisfying thing to see.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Her hair is black as soot, and her face looks like she's caked in creepy white make up.
- Greater-Scope Villain: For the second film and even part of the first film. It was her that caused Parker Crane to become the Bride in Black.
- Hate Sink: From all the undead and demons featured in the franchise, she is one of the least sympathetic ones. She forced her son to act and dress as a girl and would abuse him physically and verbally when he refused.
- Would Hurt a Child: Not only did she constantly hit and verbally abuse her young son, but she also would go to the Lamberts' youngest child's room and shout at baby Cali.
The Man Who Can't Breathe
The Man Who Can't Breathe
Played By: Michael Reid MacKay
Appearances: Insidious: Chapter 3
A demon that drives people to suicide so that he can keep their souls as pets.
- Ambiguously Human: Is referred to as a demon, yet appears as the ghost of a human being, albeit a monstrous and frightening one.
- Big Bad: Of the third film. It desires to keep the souls of others within its domain, and targets Quinn, which drives the plot.
- Demon of Human Origin: Implied to be the case. Elise calls him a demon while also acknowledging that this particular spirit was once a mortal man.
- Dirty Old Man: Clearly the ghost of a very old and demented man, whom seems to want to keep very young women and girls as “pets” in his afterlife.
The Long-Haired Fiend
The Long-Haired Fiend
Played By: J. LaRose
Appearances: Insidious | Insidious: Chapter 2
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Sports a long black trench-coat to complete his shady look.
- The Dragon: He guards the red door and attempts to fight Josh at its entrance, so he can be considered this.
- Glass Cannon: When fought under the wrong conditions like being in fear, he puts up a considerable fight, but if his opponent uses their living-ness to their advantage or has an astral lantern for exorcisms in lieu of being alive, he is immediately defeated.
- The Heavy: The most physically imposing and actively violent of the first film’s recurring spirits.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Fiend is a vicious and predatory spirit that often attacks Renai, an attractive woman, in a highly suggestive and perverse manner.
- Rapid Aging: An odd example. The Fiend’s appearance shifts depending on the scene, going from relatively normal-looking (if a bit pale) in his first appearance, to quite grayish in his second, before becoming rotted into a skeletal face by his third appearance.
- When he appears in the second film, he appears almost zombie-like, though with less rot.
- Serial Killer: Implied to have been this, or a Serial Rapist in his life, leading to his current place in The Further.
- Would Hurt a Child: Terrorizes the infant Callie throughout the first film, though this is in part to lure out Renai.
Other Characters
Ted
Ted Garza
Played By: Kirk Acevedo
Appearances: Insidious: The Last Key
A man who experiences paranormal activity after moving into Elise's childhood home, and calls the paranormal investigators for help.
- Driven to Madness: He is being haunted by KeyFace and has been doing his bidding. Once it is discovered that he has been holding a hostage in the basement, he immediately turns hostile.
