The good news about writer/director Jacob Chase’s “Insidious: Out of the Further” is that this franchise is still a reliable scare machine.
The bad news is that this is, by far, the strangest entry yet and the best for the devoted fanbase. There’s still lots of kick left in this series.
This is the sixth “Insidious” installment, and it doesn’t have Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne playing the Lamberts or even Tiny Tim’s “Tip Toe Through the Tulips”!
No Tiny Tim?! Those monsters!
We meet Gemma as a small child, growing up in a real horror of a home where Mom is unreliable and the setting seems haunted long before the ghosts appear. Decades later, Gemma (now played by Amelia Eve) is a single mother who still lives in that scary house (!).
When the misty, ghost-inhabited domain of The Further oozes into the real world, Gemma turns to her friends and a real ghostbuster (returning series favorite Lin Shaye) to take on a vile opponent.
Arriving at a time when “found footage,” unwanted remakes and “torture porn” were making the horror genre a past-its-prime ordeal, the original “Insidious” (2011) was a reminder that these movies don’t need gore or mutilations to work,
They just need to be scary.
The low-budget, style and jolt-driven first movie was a breath of fresh air that led to a renaissance of films that aimed for frights and emotional connections, not just stomach-churning frills. That said, I often confuse this franchise with the other Wilson-led series, “The Conjuring” (2013-2025), which, like this one, is ongoing and has had its ups and downs.
The low point here is a variation on the old standby where the heroes use homemade models to give each other and the audience a rundown on what to expect. Here, instead of tiny homes, the heroes use grapefruits with the characters’ faces tattooed on them, a touch so goofy I thought the filmmakers were kidding.
A horror movie cliché that I’m absolutely sick of that this movie utilizes is how we must watch yet another videocassette of a creepy cult performing some weird ritual. Why is it that there’s always someone filming these things?
Then there’s the grand finale, which goes so over the top that the film’s just-go-with-it paranormal logic is stretched far beyond the ectoplasmic breaking point. Late in the film, the main villain declares, “Now, we take over the world,” but I have no idea how he could do this.
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The strength of “Insidious: Out of the Further” is in the set pieces, which include a frightening chase through the kind of cushion-and-blanket maze my daughter makes monthly, and the dual chases occurring in the real world and The Further.
The two leads work hard and are likable enough but are outshone by the large legion of villains, sporting names like Plate Licker, Wheezing Man and Lipstick Demon. None of them have the vivid dread of The Nun or Annabelle the doll, but at least the filmmakers are still pulling most of their visual and thematic inspiration from “Carnival of Souls” (1962).
The real star here is returning franchise favorite Shaye as paranormal expert Elise Rainier, who is meant to provide this with the same center and exposition that Zelda Rubinstein gave the “Poltergeist” films (1982-1988).
Actually, Shaye, who has been acting in films for over 50 years, is now a horror luminary and gives to this movie what Christopher Lee and Vincent Price used to in their day.
The first film was terrifying, if too similar to “Poltergeist” (1982). The first sequel, “Insidious: Chapter 2” (2013) was better and scarier than the original. The next couple of sequels had their moments but it was the 2013 “Insidious: The Red Door,” directed by Wilson, that felt like a conclusive victory lap.
“Out of the Further” demonstrates that these movies are still scary and inventive but need either a redirect or Wilson and Byrne to come back.
Also, for those who have a major phobia about going to the dentist: do NOT see this movie under any circumstances.
Two and a half stars (out of four)