Lipstick-Face Demon. The Bride in Black. Key Face.
Adam Robitel’s Insidious: The Last Key introduces a new franchise demon in the form of Key Face, played by Javier Botet and notably equipped with keys for fingers. It’s not all that clear in the film, but Key Face seems to be a sort of super-villain in The Further, holding the keys necessary to unlock other malicious demons that reside in that place.
He’s also able to possess people in the real world, making them carry out his evil deeds.
As Robitel explained to us last week, Key Face was not in the original script.
“The earlier draft that Leigh had did not have a demon in it,“ he told us. “And I said, ‘Guys, to be honest, when I think of Insidious I think about Lipstick Demon and the iconography of the franchise. You guys need a demon that is kind of evocative of prison and locks and keys.’“
Robitel continued, detailing the origin of the new demon, “So, out of those first couple of meetings I got the job and then we ended up coming up with Key Face.“
Working with concept artist Jacob Hair, Robitel came up with an early take on Key Face that was shared over on Facebook by Hair today. “[The illustration] was done super early on to help sell them on Adam’s take on the movie,” Hair explained to us. “It was inspired by some leprosy reference Adam had.”
“[Adam] and I relayed a bunch of ideas that ranged from far-out and fantastic to very grounded and real. This direction seemed to split the difference nicely.”
This early concept is a bit different than the finished design, as Key Face doesn’t yet have keys for fingers and is bald. The coolest thing about the early design is that Key Face literally has a giant key hole embedded into his face, which isn’t really conveyed with the final design; I didn’t even realize that’s what they were going for until I saw this art.
