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Elise Rainier is the main protagonist of the Insidious franchise, serving as the tritagonist of Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2 and Insidious:The Red Door and as the main protagonist of Insidious: Chapter 3 and Insidious: The Last Key. She was a friend of Lorraine Lambert for many years and helped Josh during his childhood to escape the Bride in Black from taking his physical body.

After helping Josh as a child but before meeting him as an adult, Elise helps a teenager girl called Quinn Brenner, who is plagued by a demon who wants her soul for its own. Elise helps Quinn to defeat the demon, and in doing so her faith in life is restored and she begins working with Tucker Croft and Specs to help other people in similar situations.

Elise is killed at the end of the first movie by the Bride in Black, who has successfully possessed Josh. She reappears in the second movie as a spirit in the Further, where she helps Josh get back to his physical body and stop Parker from killing his family.  

History[]

Insidious[]

Young Elise

As an early psychic, Elise and her associate Carl were called by Lorraine because her son Josh was being terrorized by an evil entity that tried to gain his physical body. Later, she is once again called by the Lamberts because they need help to get their son back from the Further entities. Firstly Tucker and Specs come to their house and inspect for any other explanations but Tucker sees a ghostly lady and says to call her immediately where she comes to their house Accompanied by her two assistants Tucker Croft and Specs, she manages to sense what’s taken Daron and give Specs the information who draws the Lipstick Demon and Renai gets worried as she can hear Elise’s frantic whispering and grabs the drawing then turns the lights on. While Lorriane and Rennai believe her, Josh can’t accept this, especially when she states the reason Dalton is a powerful Astral Projector is because he gets it from Josh. When it is revealed what happened in his childhood, he wants them to leave, which they do, but that night while in Dalton's room a picture falls down showing the exact same creature Elise described, the Red Door and a drawing where he said he saw himself sleeping and flew away.

Josh invited them back and Elise is successful in sending him into the further and even helping him beat demons there by stating he’s stronger as he’s the one who’s alive, they succeed in the task and get Dalton back from the Further. As she packs up for the night, Josh hands her his childhood photos, but as she takes them, she gives Josh a strange and startled look, whips out her camera and snaps a photo of Josh. Furious, Josh goes in a rage and violently strangles Elise, killing her. It is revealed that what made Elise so scared was that she saw the Old Woman's dirty and shriveled hands, implying that Josh was possessed.

Insidious: Chapter 2[]

At the beginning of the movie, a younger Elise comes into the Lambert's home. She meets Lorraine after being called by Carl. She learns that Josh is being haunted by the Bride In Black. After confronting her, Elise gets scratched and immediately rushes downstairs. She tells Lorraine that the ghost is not a friend but a parasite. Lorraine asks if there is a way to get rid of his gift, Elise answering that she can suppress his memory and therefore get rid of his gift, which she ends up doing under Lorraine's request. Later on in the movie, Carl helps Josh search for Elise who can help him. When Josh gets attacked by the Long Haired Fiend, Elise comes to the rescue and saves him. She reunites with Josh and Carl and tells Josh the only way to destroy the Bride In Black is to destroy the memory of Parker Cranes mother.

The three decide to go back in time and ask young Josh who shows them the way. The three watch as the mom of Parker Crane abuses him and forces him to believe he is a girl. Parker Crane's Mother sees Elise and pushes her and Carl out the door and locks them out. She hides from Josh as he searches and soon finds her. She almost chokes him to death but Elise managed to have the door opened with the help of Parker Crane and kills his mother, destroying the memories and releasing the demon out of Josh's vessel. Josh and Carl go back to the real world and Elise stays back. In the end, Elise meets a girl named Allison who is in a "coma" and realizes something rising behind her. Elise is shocked and says "Oh my god!" gasping, hinting a sequel. The thing that was behind Allison is believed to be the red face demon as it made the same crackling sound as it did in Insidious 1.

Insidious: Chapter 3[]

Elise appears at the beginning of the film when Quinn wants her to contact her dead mother. She lets Quinn come in for a minute and helps her contacting her dead mother but when she does another voice threatens to kill her so she stops contacting to the other side. After that, Elise goes to sleep and has a vision of Quinn in the further seeing a man who can't breathe walking towards her. She wakes up gets her journal and writes about Quinn Brenner. She goes to the girl's house to stop the happenings but in The Further she is choked by the Bride in Black making her scared and not able to finish the happening. She goes to Carl for information who tells her that : "When someone gets attacked on the streets, people call the police but when you get attacked by something you can't see they get people like us to help". This helps Elise to get stronger and comes back to the Brenner's home with the help of Specs and Tucker. She then goes in the Further and meets with a woman who shows her the man who can't breathe's home in which she meets the Bride in Black again. This time she fights back throwing the Bride in black against the wall. The Bride in black flees while Elise rush to the person on the bed which is the demon looking like her husband Jack.

Knowing he isn't her husband, she slashes the demon with the knife. The demon laughs grimy clapping to call the faceless Quinn but Elise pushes the demon out of the way and grabs Quinn. They take the elevator down but the demon comes out of nowhere and throws Elise back but she gets up and makes the demon fall in the hole. Before Elise made it back the demon grab Quinn, Elise tells Quinn's father, Specs and Tucker that this part of the battle has to be fight by Quinn alone. Elise asks Quinn's mother to help her daughter and Quinn gains the power to end the demon by ripping off his mask ending him for good allowing Quinn to go back into her body. Elise tells her and Sean that Lilith will always be with them even if they can't see her. Elise tells Specs and Tucker to join her for other investigation. At the end of the movie, Elise gets ready for bed when she sees her husband sweater folded on the bed, her dog starts barking at the darkness. She looks at the direction pointed by her dog's barking seeing a small face in the doorway then the camera goes back to Elise which allows the audience to see the lipstick-faced demon scaring them behind her back.

Insidious: The Last Key[]

In the 1950's, it is revealed that Elise used to live in a small town in New Mexico called "Five Keys", where her father worked in the local prison. After her father locked her in the basement of her house, she then met KeyFace who convinced Elise to open the door from his world to our world, he then escapes and possesses Elise making her kill her mother, Audrey.

In the 1960's, Elise then meets a woman who has escaped from the basement who was locked in by her father. Elise, thinking the woman is a ghost, asks her to come out with her to show her brother, Christian, when her father walks in and taunts her, telling her that she’s only saying she sees ghosts for attention. Elise then runs away from her home, leaving her brother as her father proceeds to kill the lady he abducted.

While working in Five Keys, New Mexico to help Ted Garza who now lives in her Childhood home as he says he’s being haunted, she encounters things from her past. One of which is Christian's Whistle, given to him by their mother to call for help, that went missing the night their mother died. The next morning she takes Specs and Tucker to a diner they used to go to as children and encounters two girls, one of whom she says looks familiar and goes to talk to them. While talking to them, she finds out they're named Imogen and Mellissa, and while they’re talking their dad comes in and Elise finds out that their Father is Christian, making the two girls her nieces. While trying to talk, Christian states that although he has no ill-will against her, he doesn’t wish to reconnect as she terrified him as a child by talking about ghosts and monsters, and left him alone with the real monster in the house, their Father. He then storms out of the diner and tells his daughters they’re leaving too.

While outside the diner calling her father as he drives away, Mellissa comes up to Elise to talk to her and reveals they didn’t know anything about her or his childhood, but that he’s a great dad which makes Elise happy to learn that he is the complete opposite of their father and gives her a photo showing the Whistle from the previous nights investigation. Later that night, while she and Tucker continue the house investigation, they come across the spirit who showed her the Whistle and uses it to bring her into the basement, where the spirit reveals that Garza is a serial killer of women and so was her father, who was influenced by the Evil in that house, and that her father's previous victim had guided Elise to the captured woman to save her from the same fate.

When Elise and Tucker try to get the girl out, Garza attacks them. Specs come to try rescue them and leads Garza on a chase in the house where he kills him and saves everyone. While Elise is at the police station talking to the detective about what happened, Christian, Melissa and Imogen are in the house searching for his Whistle, as it is the last keepsake of their mother. While looking, Melissa is attacked by Key Face who locks her voice then her soul. Elise returns and knows something’s up and they call for ambulance. Imogen asks Elise and reveals she has the same powers as Elise, and found out about it when she was asleep; she floated out of her body and to the elderly next door neighbor, something which her dad has always forbidden her talk about it.

Imogen decides to stay and help Elise in order to save her sister while she and Specs look for a specific Bible upstairs, Elise and Tucker go back to the basement shelter to find out more information and Elise receives a Retro-Cognitive vision of the past: When she left home as a teenager, the woman Elise thought was a ghost and saw as her catalyst for leaving wasn’t a ghost at all; the woman was actually alive at the time and was trying to get help, but by trying to escape, Elise's Father killed her. While in a tunnel funding suitcases from each victim, Elise is attacked again by Keyface who emerges from one of the cases and brings her into the Further, like when she was a child.

While in the Further, Elise talks to her younger self from the time when she was hypnotized after opening the first door, which allowed Keyface to kill her mother. While in the real world, Elise is comatose, and Specs and Tucker panic because they cannot get to the Further to save her. Imogen volunteers and Tucker gets her inside and she looks to find her aunt and sister with Anna, the previous murder victim guiding her to the door which reveals the prison next door on that plane, and gives her the Whistle and Lantern. Imogen walks through and hear screams of guilt from the cells.

Elise wakes up in a cell to the screams of tormented spirits and finds a chain around her neck. As she sees a cell opposite her own with her father inside, his cell opens and as he walks over to Elise's cell, she relives all the abuse he gave her as a child. Key Face gives her the opportunity to punish him back as revenge. As she does so, Imogen comes to her shouting her name, making her realize Key Face used her father as a puppet to feed on human misery and other negative emotions. Keyface attacks Imogen for breaking his hold on Elise and proceeds to torture Mellissa’s astral self, which causes her to thrash around and slowly die in the real world. When he goes to attack Elise again, Elise's father attempts to protect her by stopping him, but Keyface destroys his spirit and seals Elise's voice, but Imogen throws her the Whistle which she uses. Her mother Audrey's spirit appears and picks up the lantern, telling the demon to get his hands off her daughter. She then smacks the lantern into Keyface, banishing him and breaking the chains, freeing her daughter.

Audrey guides Elise and the girls out of the Further. As they go through a red door, they see Dalton in the attic before he falls and leave the red door open, which may have led to his astral spirit getting trapped in Insidious. Elise and Imogen take Mellissa to the hospital where she goes back into her body just as her body flatlining. Mellissa awakens and lets her dad know that Elise saved her. Elise and Imogen go back to their respective bodies shortly after.

When they wake, they go to the real hospital and Elise makes amends with Christian, returning the Whistle to him. He asks for her forgiveness and they embrace while Specs kisses Imogen and Tucker asks Melissa for her Jelly. At the end, she gets the call from Lorraine asking for her help with Dalton, leading back to the first film.

'Insidious: The Red Door[]

Dalton and his college roommate was watching a clip of Elise doing psychiatric lecture in front of her students. Since she was already dead, this clip was recorded years ago by Specs and Tucker.

Later on, after Josh was awakened for helping his son cover the painting entirely with black, he was outside and the ghost of Elise shows up telling Josh that the investigation is completed. She disappeared when Josh looked at the mirror and turned.

Powers and Abilities[]

Elise Rainier is an incredibly powerful psychic and has displayed several abilities, such as;

  • Mediumship: Elise is able to contact and sense the spirits of the dead which she uses to help the living by confronting malicious hauntings or by contacting loving benevolent spirits for people like a dead loved one.
  • Clairvoyance: The ability to gain information or premonitions on: objects, people, places or events.
  • Remote Viewing: able to discern this information about present events as seen when she knew Melissa was hurt and missing.
  • Retrocognition: able to gain information from the past like who she found out that what she thought was Anna’s ghost when she was a teenager wasn’t a ghost but she was still alive at the time and she relives what happened but from Anna’s point of view just by being in her presence.
  • Precognition: Ability to discern future events, when she was a teenager and saw Anna believing she was a ghost her father was going to beat her but she with her anger made them both see a vision of his future dying old and alone.
  • Astral Projection: Able to project her Astral Self into the further and ghostly planes of existence. Also as an astral body she used her strength as being alive amplified to attack malevolent spirits like the Long Haired Fiend, Parker Crane and his mother and the man with breathing mask. She could also influence other physical objects in from the Further, such as open doors without touching them.
  • Empathy (Possibly): as she can pick up emotions of spirits as she can often tell quickly if they’re bad or good spirits. She also when giving her father a vision of his future she also caused him pain maybe attacking him with the pain he caused to her and others as he fell down in pain and she was able to runaway from home.

Relationships[]

Family[]

Allies[]

Enemies[]

Behind the Scenes[]

Elise Rainier was portrayed by Lin Shaye in five films and by Lindsay Seim (young) in Insidious: Chapter 2.

Appearances[]


Insidious logo
Films InsidiousInsidious: Chapter 2Insidious: Chapter 3Insidious: The Last KeyInsidious: The Red DoorThread: An Insidious Tale
Cast Patrick WilsonRose ByrneLin ShayeTy SimpkinsBarbara HersheyDermot MulroneyStefanie ScottAngus SampsonLeigh WhannellSpencer LockeCaitlin GerardBruce DavisonMandy MooreKumail Nanjiani
Characters Josh LambertRenai LambertElise RainierDalton LambertLorraine LambertSean BrennerQuinn BrennerTucker CroftSteven "Specs" FisherMelissa RainierImogen RainierChristian Rainier
Crew James Wan • Leigh Whannell • Adam Robitel • Patrick Wilson • Jeremy Slater
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