Patrick Wilson is a Scream King. the shot from Persia, who writes: “I’m just saying if Ed and Lorraine Warren asked me to be in a throuple with them I wouldn’t say no.”

Wilson makes his directorial debut with Insidious: The Red Door, reprising his role as dad Josh Lambert alongside Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor and more. The film follows the Lambert family ten years after the traumatic events of Insidious: Chapter 2, a film in which Kayla notes that “Patrick Wilson has his little Jack Torrance moment here.” We all go a little mad sometimes.

Josh and his son Dalton (Simpkins) have now decided to completely block out those years, but their forgotten memories cause unforeseen problems. (Something that sounded a bit like “AAAAAAHHH!!! AHHHHHHH!!!” for Jacob.) To put it short, their family life kind of sucks now.

The Insidious movies left their mark on the world—the first one earned a whopping $100 million at the box office on a budget of only $1.5 million, and those profit margins have remained fairly consistent throughout the franchise. With The Red Door, it’s all still wide open.

If you’re worried they’re just retreading old ground, Wilson has another thing coming. As Flynn writes: “Leave it to Patrick Wilson to make the most wholesome horror film of all time.” He made that happen with inspirations as varied as Fast Five, Salem’s Lot, Italian horror masters and his love for weird, weird movies. Let him explain.

Dalton going to college and then turning it on its head? Wow, what a bonus. I knew I really wanted to unpack the second movie and the trauma they went through. I really built the whole movie around the basement laundry room sequence, really. That was my most important kind of linchpin.

This movie opens with the idea of forgetting trauma at the end of Chapter 2, and you’d think that would be the end of the story. But I love how it opens with that causing more problems for the family. 
It’s funny, there were so many variables of this process that were new. I haven’t directed a film before, but I knew I needed to make a story I believed in. When I pitched my idea, we had just the kernel of Leigh’s idea. I thinking, “If I’m in this movie in any capacity, I don’t really want to be in the movie. If I am, I’m going to address what happened at the end of Insidious: Chapter 2.” What does that do to someone over nine years? It has to come out. When it does, what’s he going to do? Does he turn to his wife and go, “What the hell, you lied to me?” That’s the breakdown of communication, the secrets, the deception, all this understanding trauma, reliving trauma, and the father/son dynamic.

There were all these very heavy themes that I felt excited about exploring, because you could never explore that in an adult drama in a studio movie. They don’t make those anymore. They just don’t do it on a studio scale. It would be on Apple or something. No offense to Apple, but you’re not going to the theater to see an adult drama about family trauma. But through a horror movie, I can do it. It lends itself to that. The great horror movies have that real emotional core—then you can just blow it out of the water. Insidious has such a weird avant-garde, quirky side to it that I wanted to explore as well, hence the ending.

When I was in the theater, it was just me and the security guard watching it. I yelling out during the first jump scare, “Jesus Christ!” at the top of my lungs and I heard him laughing in the hallway.
That’s good!

What were some horror movies that you grew up on? Do you have any vivid memories of some really good ones, that maybe you saw too young?
Salem’s Lot, I saw it on TV in 1979. I was six and should not have seen it. Kids scratching on the window terrified me so much that when I was a teenager and wanted to watch horror movies with my friends, I was like, “There’s no way. I’m not watching that. That movie scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. I’m not doing it. It’s so scary to me.” and they’re like, “We’re going to watch it.” I was so nervous. But then I watched and it and thought, “Aw, it’s kind of sweet.”

It’s never as scary as that first moment and first memory you have of seeing it.
I agree. But then I’ll have a movie like all the Jason movies. I’ll tell them, “It’s not about the violence, you’re going to be bored.”

Silence of the Lambs and Jaws are big ones for me. In this research I took a deep dive into a lot of ’70s horror, I found a new love with that. A lot of early Mario Bava. Even later ’80s movies too, like Phenomena with Jennifer Connelly. I like when it gets weird. I like totally bizarre, supernatural elements, borderline melodrama. I love the fearlessness of a lot of European directors. I don’t think a lot of typical American directors do that, but horror gives you that place. All of a sudden, if you’re seemingly avant-garde it’s like Wes Anderson, who I adore. It’s so hard to find those big swings with production design or concepts. That’s why we can lean on the Italian masters.

Did you know that your scene in Little Children could resonate with so many Letterboxd over the years?
I did not know that but it’s good to know. Here’s a funny story, speaking of baring butt. We were rehearsing for Bone Tomahawk; me, Richard Jenkins, Kurt Russell, our director Craig Zahler. They were about to cast the actor who gets split open at the end, and he had to bare his ass. We had to see him naked and the young guy would not do it.

We’re listening to Craig on this call say, “It’s okay, we can put clothes on him.” All of a sudden you hear me and Kurt going, “No, no. He’s got to bare his ass.” We all look around at each other like, “You bared your ass?” Richard Jenkins goes “Yeah, well, yeah, several times.” We all go around the room and say, “If we can bare our ass then this no-name guy can bare his butt. Tell him to do it or don’t hire him.” And he does it.

That’s movie magic right there.
You’ve got to add it to your list.

I have to ask you, as we ask everyone at Letterboxd: do you have four favorite movies you could share with us? I know that’s a lofty question.
It is a lofty question because there are two things in there. When I say movies that I love are my favorite movies, they’re usually movies that I grew up on. But I don’t know if they’re movies that I watch over and over. Movies that I will watch over and over, off the top of my head, it’s going to be Fletch. It’s going to be Heat. I’d love to say The Godfather: Part II because it’s one of my favorite movies ever. I don’t know that I’m watching it front to back a lot. It’s usually got to be something a little more snappy, if I’m really going to watch something over and over. Raiders [of the Lost Ark]. I can put that on at any point.

Those are movies to me that I can sit down and feel good and it’s very hard to switch the channel. When we were in production for Insidious, they had all these horror movie posters up on the walls in our production office. Somebody asked, “Do you mind if we put up a Conjuring poster?” Like, this is Insidious. I said, “Do I mind? No, but here’s the deal. If you put up Conjuring, you have to put up Fletch right next to it.” It was all these horror movies and Fletch. That’s pretty much me right there.