A Deleted Insidious Scene Required A Lot Of Wire Work From Patrick Wilson
"Insidious" is commonly cited as one of the scariest movies of the 21st century. In a 2021 study called the Science of Scare Project, the company Broadband Choices hooked horror movie viewers up to heart monitors to determine what movies scared them the most, and ended up awarding the James Wan-directed ghost story with the title of "biggest jump scare" for a scene that got audiences pulses pounding at 133 beats per minute.
Now imagine, if you will, that "Insidious" was exactly the same movie we all watched in 2010 — red demon jump scare, ominous Lin Shaye proclamation and all — but it had approximately 300% more Patrick Wilson floating. Would it still be considered a dependable source of freaky scares? I'm not sure, but that's a world we apparently almost got to live in, as a DVD special feature for the movie titled "On Set With Insidious" revealed that a cut scene initially featured Wilson's stressed-out dad Josh Lambert flying through The Further on his first visit to the otherworldly realm. The scene was not only shot, but apparently included in an early cut of the film. "In the initial first cut of 'Insidious,' when Patrick first enters The Further, his character physically floats through the world," filmmaker Wan shared on the featurette.
Forget Tiptoe Through The Tulips, we almost had floating through the Further
"That was playing with the theme that you float out of your body and you continue floating into this other world," Wan explained. In the featurette, Wilson can be seen gliding on wires, and though the sequence looks better than it sounds on paper, it's easy to see why this scene had to go. He's not flying like Peter Pan, but still standing upright, holding a lantern and wearing an anxious scowl in what feels like a moment out of an adaptation of "A Christmas Carol." "We actually shot that whole sequence of Patrick floating," writer Leigh Whannell confirms in the DVD extra, "but we just felt like that was maybe something that took the audience out of the film a little bit, and so we actually reshot that."
The scene does seem like it could have come across as a bit more goofy than intense, but plenty of "Insidious" shouldn't work and does anyway. After all, it's a franchise featuring a character with keys for fingers, whose most terrifying villain looks like Darth Maul. Still, it's probably a good thing Whannell and Wan decided to axe the floating out-of-body experience: If it had been successful, it would've set a demanding precedent for the film's sequels, as they include plenty more trips into the demonic realm known as The Further that would've required the same transitional shot. Wilson, who's in good spirits in the special feature footage but can be heard saying "my legs are starting to tingle," would've gotten a lot more acquainted with those uncomfortable stage wires than anyone would ever want to.
Wan and Whannell made the right call
Luckily, Wan and Whannell decided to axe the floating effect and go for a more straightforward version of The Further, in which Josh and his haunted son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) can move pretty freely throughout the sort of dark, mirrored universe. The franchise's fifth installment, "Insidious: The Red Door," is set to bring the family back to The Further for the first time in a decade, as the franchise's third and fourth entries were prequels about other characters.
In the new movie, Dalton is set to begin college and has repressed his memories of the events of the first two films, but judging by the film's trailer, the demons of the past clearly aren't done with him or his dad. This time around, if anyone ends up floating on wires, it'll be Wilson himself putting them there: The actor is making his directorial debut with the new film, which hits theaters on July 7, 2023.