The thing about life is, things happen when they are supposed to, not when you want them to. Take Brandon Perea, who’s starring in Sony’s upcoming Insidious: Out of the Further, the sixth installment of the Insidious franchise, which hits theaters on Friday, August 21. In a year when James Wan and Jason Blum helped bring horror to the box office with the success of Obsession and Backrooms, it’s a great year for theaters in general, horror specifically.
Perea’s no stranger to success, or horror for that matter. Many first saw his work as French in Netflix’s mysterious 2016 series The OA, while others definitely remember him as the electronics store employee helping OJ and Em photograph an extraterrestrial in Jordan Peele’s 2022 epic Nope. Perea had even landed a spot in 2024’s Twisters; life tends to life sometimes, and Perea was feeling it as a working actor.
“I was kind of going through some things in my life where I live in Los Angeles,” he shares with Complex over Zoom, “there's this moment where you kind of trap yourself in LA waiting for work, and life stuff was happening.” He decided to take some time away from everything, heading overseas to visit Italy and Northern Ireland before heading to Puerto Rico. “I'm half Puerto Rican,” Perea explains, “and I've never been before. I was on the island, and I just felt this magic of the island that was just letting me know that everything's OK and I'm exactly where I need to be.” After spending some time with his family in Chicago, Perea finally boarded a flight back to Los Angeles. That’s when, after grabbing 15 minutes of free Wi-Fi on his flight home, he checked his email, and he saw it.
“I get sent this script,” Perea says, “and I'm like, ‘Oh, okay, let me see what this is.’ I open it, and it's the Insidious script with the famous Insidious lettering on the front page in black and red. And I was just like, ‘What? Yo, I'm in consideration for Insidious. This is crazy.’" Perea’s excitement was two-fold: first, after all of that internal strife about his next gig, it was taking time to reconnect with himself and his family that made way for this blessing. Second, he’s an admitted Insidious fan, so any involvement in the series was high on his list. “I read the first 10 pages while I was on the flight,” Perea remembers, “and I was just like, ‘Whoa, this is really good. It's dark. It's very haunting. And that's what you want as a fan of this horror movie franchise. You want to feel scared.’" Perea finished the script on his flight home, praising the edge it brings to the Insidious franchise. “‘They're bringing back old demons and introducing new ones,’" Perea remembers thinking. "This is the Avengers of horror movies."
[Ed Note: Without getting too spoiler-y, there is a moment in Insidious: Out of the Further that feels Avengers: Endgame-esque. You’ll know it when you see it.]
By the next morning, Perea was offered a role in what’s become Insidious: Out of the Further. “That was a sign for me personally, just from God being like, now that you have a clear mind, you're ready to go to work,” Perea says. “The fact that I got offered a studio movie is just…that don't happen. Sony Pictures, Blumhouse, Atomic Monster, all these amazing production companies coming together to make this franchise. I felt like it was a sign from a higher power being like, ‘now you're ready to go to work. You have a clear mind. It's game time.’”
That’s a W attitude to have for the 31-year-old. Even though he’s an admitted Insidious head, he didn’t let that cloud the job he was there to do. “On set, I really got more so invested in the character dynamic,” Peresa explains, speaking on his character Nick’s relationship with Gemma (Amelia Eve). “Our character dynamic is so important and ke;, that's what I had to focus on. I didn't really put the pressure on myself of, ‘all right, we're entering the Insidious franchise.’ It was more, ‘what's the relationship here?’ I needed to focus as a normal actor just telling the story.” Perea wanted to make sure that Nick, who isn’t a traveler (someone who can move between the world of the living and The Further), but has a relationship with someone who can travel to the Further. “There was this fear of riding the line of being honestly likable in a sense, because you want to like this guy, but also he's being shared with information that's crazy, you know what I'm saying? And it's with a beloved franchise. The franchise knows the rules of the Further, but my character, Nick, doesn't. He don't know anything that's going on.”
With Out of the Further being the first Insidious film in three years, Perea says that he feels the excitement from the fans of that ‘beloved franchise’. “When the first trailer came out,” Perea remembers, “everyone's like, ‘Oh, y'all making Insidious really scary again.’ And I'm like, ‘Yes.’ And as a fan, that's what I sought. That's what I saw in the pages originally, just like, ‘whoa, this is really scary.’” Perea says that, as a fan, he was “at ease” reading the pages and seeing how Out of the Further writer-director Jacob Chase delivers frightening visuals, like the moments in the dentist’s office.
“I think that's what's important about seeing it on a big screen,” Perea admits. “You just feel something. That's what I seek in horror movies especially; I want to feel scared. I want to feel gross. I want to feel claustrophobic.” Perea thinks balance is key: make sure you’re just as connected to Gemma, Nick, and Gemma’s daughter and their connection while the terror mounts. Nailing that aspect, the likeability of a “regular” guy, was more of a challenge for Perea this time out.
“I'm a pretty character-y type of actor,” Perea continues. “Nope, I'm way different. In The OA, I'm way different than myself, and in Twisters, way different than myself. I always had something to pull from in that sense where I crafted an entry point.” For his work as Nick, it was more natural for Perea to get into Nick’s rhythms, as he realized that he, too, reacts and processes information in the same manner as Nick.
“My character is kind of doing the same thing where it's like, let me hear you out,” Perea says. “There's points in the film where I felt like I was doing no acting. It just felt like I was just doing the thing.”
It got to a point, on set, that Perea says that he was giving so much of himself to Chase, to his castmembers, that he was at times unable to find his way as Nick. It wasn’t until he watched a Mia Goth interview while she was promoting Frankenstein that things clicked. Goth says she was trying to tap into her character when she realized that she was already doing things that her character would do. “I was like, ‘Boom, that gave me all the comfort in the world." I'm like, ‘Thank you, Mia Goth. You saved me emotionally.’"
Perea treats that as a life lesson. “I just got to trust that I'm approaching it well in my everyday life, and inevitably it'll just flow into the character.”
Sometimes, life ends up imitating art. A pro jamskater, Perea’s an active guy. Check out his socials; he’s dancing, doing flips, or practicing his muay thai and boxing. Earlier this year, it was announced that The Faith of Long Beach, a film Perea has been attached to since 2022, was adding Snoop Dogg as an executive producer and in an acting role. Perea is set to star in the project, a boxing drama directed by Eric Amadio of Snowfall fame, which taps into his love for the sweet science.
“I've been waiting for it,” Perea says when asked about the project. “I'm glad that I've been able to showcase my abilities as just purely an actor on screen, because the last thing I wanted was to be a gimmicky actor,” which is a good worry. The last thing you want is to be someone known for breakdancing so you get typecast in dancer-type roles. “The fact that I've been able to get jobs just based off of pure acting performance is a gift,” Perea says.
“I've been waiting for my opportunity to bring my hobbies into my acting,” Perea explains. “This is stuff that I was doing for work prior to my abilities as an actor.
“I don't think anyone needs anyone, especially in this industry,” Perea continues, “but I know how much I can add to a story with the abilities that I have. So I've just been waiting for the right moment.”
Insidious: Out of the Further hits theaters on August 21, 2026.
