Insidious: Out of the Further is in theaters on Friday, August 21.
With 2023’s Insidious: The Red Door having served as an effective swan song to Blumhouse’s first original horror franchise, Out of the Further arrives with one chance to prove that the light over the series’ spectral crimson door deserves to be kept on after all. With a grab bag of different-flavored scares that broadly work, some grounded performances, and a willingness to double down on the abject weirdness of the world-building that’s been established up to this point, against the odds for a sixth film in any franchise, Insidious: Out of the Further maintains a steady stride and winds up being a hell of a good time.
As the title suggests, Insidious: Out of the Further sets itself apart from the films which precede it by opening the proverbial (and literal) door from the spirit realm into the material plane in a much more significant way than ever before. It’s true that we’ve seen the spirits of the Further out in the real world, but generally, these apparitions are fairly closely shackled to the bodies of those they’re trying to possess, and incapable of too much more than going “boo”… or I guess luring them into the street, like in the case of Insidious: Chapter 3’s Quinn. The particulars of how (and to what degree) the Further gets Out are fun to discover along the way, but suffice to say that protagonist Gemma (Amelia Eve) had a rough childhood that has left her unable to move on in life in a way that’s made her a valuable target for the spirits of The Further. The opening scene paints a truly sad picture of Gemma’s childhood, as she tiptoes around her house to avoid drawing the attention of her mother, who’s clearly in the throes of a crisis that’s been going on for some time. It sets up a dynamic that carries into Gemma’s adulthood, as she navigates fears of transferring that experience onto her daughter Maya (Island Austin).
Amelia Eve does fine work shouldering Gemma’s growing instability as she tries to keep her feet on the ground, although writer/director Jacob Chase’s script hammers a bit too hard on the “passing familial trauma along” element of the story, routinely saying out loud what the imagery and performance already clearly communicate. It feels especially repetitive in the context of Insidious: The Red Door’s plot, which focused on the reconciliation of Patrick Wilson and Ty Simpkins’ Josh and Dalton Lambert after their shared experiences in the first two chapters of the series. Though it’s not always subtle, Chase does at least prioritize threading that family drama through Out of the Further in a way that keeps the central wound Gemma is nursing in focus, so that her desperation remains palpable throughout. We see the past repeating itself through Maya’s eyes as Gemma unravels, and Island Austin strikes a good balance between vulnerability and tenacity through her mom’s ups and downs.
The director knows the Insidious films well, capably easing into the visual language of the series.“
Given all the new facets of how the Further is able to interact with the material plane in this film, Chase is able to stage a number of creative and fresh scenarios that delight in blurring the line between what’s happening in reality and what’s bleeding over from the spirit realm. Chase knows the Insidious films well, capably easing into the visual language of the series while also having a keen sense of how the rhythms of encounters with the denizens of the Further are expected to play out. At worst, the scares work about as well as they have in any other Insidious film (jump scares and audio stings abound), but Chase brings no shortage of new ideas to the table.
Two strong back-to-back sequences around the film’s midpoint represent Out of the Further at its best. The first is a claustrophobic’s nightmare set in Maya’s pillow fort. As Gemma pokes her head in, the pillow fort becomes a rat’s maze in which she’s very much not alone. Chase is able to draw the tension out of every wrong turn through the labyrinth very effectively, including some fun misdirects and camera coverage that make the most out of the tight space. By the time Gemma finally emerges, the viewer should feel just as relieved as the character.
But it’s the following sequence, which follows Gemma to her job as a dental hygienist, that is Out of the Further’s crown jewel. For a franchise that has always forefronted spectral spookies and haunted house-style bumps in the night, Insidious: Out of the Further features one of the more disgusting and visceral dental horror scenes I can recall ever having seen, as Gemma goes to work on a guy who seems like he may be better off getting his teeth checked by the Lipstick Face Demon from the first movie. Chase draws this sequence out to a fever pitch, layering one sickening and all-too-realistic gag over another. All that really dampens this excellent sequence is how it tails off into the Further, where evil-looking dentists and patients seem far more tame than the actual oral horror we just witnessed out in the real world.
The Insidious films have favored vague, elemental demons as antagonists up to this point, really as more of a visual focal point for the sleepless evil contained in the Further, but Out of the Further makes the smart choice to try out a more well-drawn villain this time out, played by A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Sam Spruell. Cyrus Lam is no hoofed, red-faced Beelzebub, but a cunning spirit with an interesting backstory which connects to how much more interaction the Further and the real world have this time out. Cyrus and his motives aren’t all that deep, but he’s different enough from previous antagonists to make his moves feel a lot more unpredictable.
Out of the Further’s strength at delivering on that namesake concept does belie a weakness of the film’s, which is that most of the material set in the Further itself is rather forgettable. The space tends to be a VFX-darkened/color-graded void in the shape of whatever house or neighborhood that particular movie is set in, where the spirits have greater power. On that front, we’re pretty firmly in “been there, done that” territory. Die-hards will no doubt delight in the myriad familiar faces among the vaudevillian freakshow of ghouls that call the Further home, but with the stakes of the film being so focused on preventing the Further from getting out, much of the anxiety surrounding the idea of the characters being trapped within feels too distant for those moments to feel all that weighty.
The movie’s supporting cast are uniformly strong at keeping Insidious: Out of the Further from astral projecting itself into incoherence. Is there anything new for Lin Shaye’s Elise Rainier to do here other than amend exposition from previous movies to explain new abilities, raise a lantern in the darkness of the Further, and scream at ghosts in the face after dying five movies ago? Nope. Is her presence and personality as welcome and warm a blanket as ever? You betcha. As Gemma’s boyfriend Nick, Brandon Perea and his excellent comedic timing are particularly well-deployed as a very open-minded skeptic. Legends of Tomorrow’s Maisie Richardson-Sellers stops by as tattoo artist/medium Clare to pick up the torch from Elise in the material plane, and while she’s mostly there as a conduit for Elise, it’s easy to see her steely comfort with the abnormal becoming a more prominent part of the series going forward. And a special shoutout to the pair of actors who play Gemma’s neighbors, the O’Sullivans. They (with some canny direction on Chase’s part) absolutely nail a self-referential gag during the very intense finale and give me hope that, for every 10 or 12 poe-faced entities that reoccur from previous movies in future installments, we get one appearance from these two just doing their best to be helpful and not to bicker too much while doing so.