'Insidious: Out of the Further' Review
- Andrew Auger
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
Release Date: 08/21/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Horror. Mystery. Thriller.
MPAA: Rated PG13.
Distributor: Screen Gems.
The Verdict: A Maybe
Insidious was a horror franchise that seemed permanently headed for the afterlife. 2023’s Insidious: The Red Door appeared to be a grand conclusion, wrapping up the story of the Lambert family through one last confrontation with the demons who have been pulling them into the underworld known as The Further. This was a goodbye to the characters that Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, and Ty Simpkins have been playing since 2011. Despite those intentions, I did not think it was an especially strong “finale.” It felt fairly small and generic, repeating a lot of the same mistakes that have plagued the sequels in this specific franchise in the years since James Wan’s original. By prioritizing jump scares and the same rote concepts of possession and haunting, it seemed the formula had completely dried up, and that this was a good stopping point.
Still, money talks, and Blumhouse was not going just to let a good thing die. The Red Door made nearly $ 200 million worldwide on a budget of less than $20 million, and that was with the salaries of two A-list actors inflating part of that budget. So here comes Insidious: Out of the Further, a soft reboot of sorts for the franchise. This is the first film in the series without at least some direct creative involvement from Wilson, Byrne, Wan, or Leigh Whannell. Whannell is the key name that’s really gone here, as he had either written or directed all five previous movies (not to mention his co-starring role as Specs the paranormal investigator). We’ve entered a new era of Insidious, with a whole new cast (with one exception) and a brand-new director.
A change in control often means one of two things for a long-running horror franchise. The new director can come in and stick to the formula, repeating many of the same tired beats to test the patience of audiences they think just want to see the hits. Alternatively, we sometimes reach a point of radical reinvention, where the filmmaker completely zags and tries something very different. This approach is often significantly more controversial and risky, but it gives the series new life it may not have had before. This may be a bit of a cop-out, but Insidious: Out of the Further straddles the line between new energy and old schtick. Writer/director Jacob Chase, making just his second feature film, acquits himself as a more than competent replacement for the Wans and Whannells of the world, and this sixth entry will satisfy both skeptics and longtime fans.
Canonically, Out of the Further takes place only a month and a half after the Lamberts’ Red Door encounter with the Lipstick Face Demon (I like to call him Darth Maul Jr.). With peace in their household achieved, the malevolent entities of the Further have to find someone else to terrorize. Gemma Hall (Amelia Eve) seems like a good candidate, a single mother trying to raise her daughter Maya (Island Austin) in the rickety old house where her own despondent mother Ingrid (Laura Gordon) killed herself decades ago. Gemma’s cop boyfriend Nick (Brandon Perea of Nope and Twisters fame) rightfully asks why they don’t leave the house and move somewhere else. It becomes evident very quickly that the ghoulish distress is not targeting the house, but Gemma herself.
The spookiness starts innocently enough, confined within Gemma’s dreams. She keeps seeing these three creepy-looking senior citizens both in the night terrors and on her own block, standing across the street from the house. What may seem like a simple emotional manifestation of her real-life anxieties quickly becomes something much more disruptive and, well, insidious. The old people eventually show up at her dental hygiene practice. What is real and what is not real remains to be seen, and Gemma desperately needs help, particularly when a dominantly evil spirit starts to take control of these visions--and of her autonomy.
One of the new things Out of the Further adds to its narrative, absent from the previous Insidious films, is a genuinely scary antagonist with dialogue and a defined motivation. Cyrus Lam, played by veteran British actor Sam Spruell, looks like if Ozzy Osbourne or Slash spent decades on an island in hell. As a pure creation of evil, this is one of the best that has ever come from the franchise. With his rocker hair, bandana-ed eyes, and silver-tipped sharp fingernails, Chase and his team give Cyrus a really memorable design, and his ability to communicate makes him feel threatening in a way that is separate from the silently scary Lipstick Face Demon.
Much of Out of the Further has an honest cruelty to it that has been desperately missing from this franchise, especially since the second film. Chase’s script puts Gemma in situations that are already uncomfortable before the entities of the Further show up. Giving her a job at a dentist’s office is an ingenious set-up, as this movie immediately goes into the Hall of Fame of Mouth Horror before the jump scares even start intruding. I was covering my eyes from the excess food being scraped from the top of braces just as much as I was during the parts that were actually meant to be scary.
There are plenty of gratuitous jumps, as Chase wasn’t able to fully shake that from the repertoire, but they have a good rhythm to them that elongates the tension beyond the moments that you expect them to hit. Case in point, a nice sequence where Gemma gets trapped inside a never-ending pillow fort. Not only does this feel like a pseudo-homage to Backrooms, but it goes on and on until you let down your guard, leaving you vulnerable to the attack. It’s not just a jump for the sake of the jump, or at least it doesn’t feel obligatory.
Most of the Insidious movies have been about the terrors of parenthood in one way or another, and Out of the Further is clearly no exception. This new era of horror directors love to tell stories of cyclical trauma, and the backbone of Out of the Further’s emotion is held together by Gemma’s desperation not to make the same mistakes that her mother made when she was a child. Just as terrifying to Gemma as the ghouls haunting her dreams is the disappointment and distrust she is sowing within her daughter with her erratic behavior. It’s out of her control, but so are many things about parenting, so why can’t this be another challenge that she conquers?
Eve, best known for one of the key roles in Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor adaptation, is a good enough lead. She has a sweet chemistry with young Austin, who does a nice job in one of her first feature films. Out of the Further doesn’t fully dispense with the original bones of the franchise, as Lin Shaye returns as Elise Rainier for the sixth straight movie. Her character is integrated into the story in a way that only slightly feels like an add-on, serving as a much-needed guide for Gemma in a time of great need. Shaye can play this character in her sleep at this point.
Insidious: Out of the Further is my favorite of the Insidious sequels. The first half of the film genuinely had me on pins and needles, both from Chase’s direction and from trying to parse how Gemma’s connection with the Further evolves the mythology. She can do things that the Lamberts never could, and those reveals, plus the inclusion of the new villain, do a decent amount of the legwork in the efforts to make this not feel phoned-in. It doesn’t fully succeed, as the third act really succumbs to much of the same chaotic, drawn-out action that has consumed the last five movies in their conclusions. You can only resist the old ways for so long, and Insidious: Out of the Further is a valiant attempt to try and keep the flame burning for this franchise, even if it eventually can’t resist becoming just another sequel.
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