Insidious Actor Ty Simpkins Tells Us The Ingredients Of The Zombie Vomit Scene, And It's Sweeter Than You Might Think

When you agree to star in a horror movie, there’s a very good chance you are going to get covered with some grotesque fluid. Usually, it’s blood. Just ask Sissy Spacek about that legendary prom scene in Carrie, one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made. But it can also be other things. Like vomit. As is what happens to Ty Simpkins in the new horror thriller Insidious: The Red Door. The fifth installment in the Insidious series had a strong box office weekend, taking the top spot over another fifth installment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And if you saw it, you will remember this scene. 

Insidious: The Red Door follows Ty Simpkins’ original Insidious character Dalton Lambert away to college. He’s attending art school, and he can’t wait to get away from his father, Josh (Patrick Wilson, who also was a guest on our ReelBlend podcast). But another thing he can’t avoid is visitors from The Further – that astral plane Dalton and his dad have been able to access using their powers (which have raised all sorts of problems for the Lambert family. 

And that manifests itself in one horrific scene for Ty Simpkins in Insidious: The Red Door. Dalton is hiding under a bed in a fraternity house, having seen an ill zombie creature vomiting in the toilet. Only Dalton can see this creature. And when he turns to run from the room, the zombie is standing right in front of Dalton… and proceeds to projectile vomit all over him. Given the chance to speak with the Insidious: The Red Door cast, I had to ask Simkins about that scene, and the amount of “vomit” he had to endure. And he laughed as he told me that it was late in the day when they filmed it. They’d saved the vomit for the last segment of the day, and probably didn’t start filming until 2 am. As for the vomit, Simpkins says:

It was Spaghetti-o's, apple sauce, and I think maybe some cinnamon in there. And they attached a hose to this guy’s cheek, and they shot it from a certain angle so that you couldn’t see it. And it just would blast out onto my face. You know, it didn’t taste horrible, just because of the cinnamon and the apple sauce. The texture was pretty gross. I’d say we did it about three times, because we had to get it done.

The final scene is horrifying. It’s quick, and aggressive, and even though the vomit is made from sweet ingredients, the fact that it comes from the mouth of an undead creature makes your skin crawl. Here Patrick Wilson talking about all that went into the making of this new movie in the latest ReelBlend episode:

We’ve been covering Insidious: The Red Door, from a breakdown of that ending, to where the new movie fits on the franchise timeline. We’ll work on getting it onto our list of Insidious movies, ranked. And keep it locked in here for our look at all of Upcoming Horror Movies coming out in 2023, and beyond.

Sean O'Connell
Managing Editor

Sean O’Connell is a journalist and CinemaBlend’s Managing Editor. Having been with the site since 2011, Sean interviewed myriad directors, actors and producers, and created ReelBlend, which he proudly cohosts with Jake Hamilton and Kevin McCarthy. And he's the author of RELEASE THE SNYDER CUT, the Spider-Man history book WITH GREAT POWER, and an upcoming book about Bruce Willis.