Insidious: Out of the Further review
A tale of two movies.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Insidious: Out of the Further
Directed by Jacob Chase
Screenplay by Jacob Chase
Starring Amelia Eve, Island Austin, Lin Shaye, Sam Spruell, Brandon Perea, Maise Richardson-Sellers, Joseph Lopez and Robina Beard
Insidious: Out of the Further Review
It’s a pretty fascinating weekend at the movies. The critically acclaimed Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finally gets its wide release. It Ends finally hits theaters too. Oh, and the latest installment of a long-running very successful franchise also happens to have a new movie hitting screens. You’ll forgive me for being glib about it…I kept forgetting that it was happening. We’ve known that Insidious: Out of the Further was coming, of course. But there wasn’t much buzz around its impending arrival. At least…not the kind of buzz you’d expect from a franchise whose last entry cleaned up over 180 million at the box office. Every one of the first five Insidious movies has been a big commercial hit.
Creatively is a bit of a different story. Audiences may eat up each installment of the franchise…but they haven’t really been all that good since the original. I know…each movie has its fans. Personally, aside from a few inspired moments along the way…I could have left Insidious as a one and done. 2023’s The Red Door felt as good a time as any to close the door (so to speak) on future entries. But when you get the box office receipts that it did…it’s only a matter of time before Blumhouse pries that door back open.
Yes…Insidious: Out of the Further is a Blumhouse production. If you’re reading this review I probably don’t need to tell you how I feel about Blumhouse. The once exciting horror production house has thrown out more misses than Henry VIII. I was particularly curious to see how a Blumhouse theatrical release would look in the current horror climate. True independents like Obsession and more experimental films like Backrooms have become box office kings. Blumhouse has become a factory of safe horror for the whole family. There’s room for all kinds, of course. But with Miasma and It Ends sharing the marquee…what even is an Insidious movie in 2026?
It turns out…it’s fine. Insidious: Out of the Further is, unsurprisingly, at its best in the pockets of time that it isn’t completely beholden to either the 5 movies worth of mythology that preceded it or the Blumhouse way. The latter probably needs no explanation. There are rules to a Blumhouse movie that are too clear to miss at this point. They want you to eat popcorn with friends…not feel like you’re watching something dangerous or innovative. Or new. The former…I couldn’t explain in less than 5 thousand words at this point. Which is a large part of why Out of the Further works best when it doesn’t really matter.
I’ve begun to think of Blumhouse productions as a test to see how well a filmmaker can make things work inside of a rigid system. Too many of these movies turn into glossy crap to be a coincidence. Insidious: Out of the Further doesn’t. Writer/director Jacob Chase manages to deliver a pretty great first act before the Insidious lore/Blumhouse squeeze takes hold. A lot of the tricks amount to “look away…look back…something might be there” but it works. There are a couple of inspired sequences involving a pillow fort and a trip to the dentist that make you think this is the movie that breaks the Blumhouse streak. But the lore and the safety net await…and no one can escape it.
It’s always fun to see Lin Shaye reprise her role as Elise despite dying all the way back in the first movie over 15 years ago. What’s less fun is watching the stories twist themselves into narrative knots trying to justify it. When Gemma (Amelia Eve) encounters Elise she’s sent on a quest to talk to…a tattoo artist who can communicate with her in the Further. I’m not going to bother getting into the Further…this is the sixth movie, and I can’ t imagine anyone saying, “well I missed the rest of them, but this seems like a fine place to start”. Yes, we get to see Elise operate in a way that ultimately makes sense…but breaking into it the way Insidious: Out of the Further does is what it is. I sat there wondering if I’d forgotten something when this new character came into the story. I don’t think I did…but I’m not going back to check either.
And that’s kind of the problem with Insidious: Out of the Further. It manages to get you excited that you’ll see something new…and then falls into old traps. Sure, it attacks things in a new way. The entities inside the Further have a new goal and there are a few neat visual tricks used to communicate it. But thirty minutes of effective jump scares ultimately give way to a movie you’ve seen over and over again. An Insidious movie…and a Blumhouse movie. They make money. There’s no denying that. Maybe the landscape has changed enough…maybe Blumhouse has burned enough good will…to change that this time. I doubt it. People still like to eat popcorn with friends while feeling safe, after all.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t even bother getting into the plot of Insidious: Out of the Further. Chase tried to do something different and the moments he gets to showcase it work pretty well. This is the story of a young woman who can do something new in the Insidious franchise. She can bring things with her back and forth from the Further. The entities in that realm between life and whatever comes next figure they could use something like that. Gemma’s story ties into a tragic childhood with her troubled mother…and her relationship with her young daughter. That stuff, along with the jump scares, are what elevate Insidious: Out of the Further from the mix of usual Blumhouse theatrical swill. But it can only get you so far. The safety net is always waiting to snag you.
Scare Value
The bottom line on this one is simple. If you like Insidious movies…the sixth one in the series is pretty good. If you like Blumhouse movies…it’s better than most of what they’ve thrown out in recent years. If you’re tired of either (or both) of those things…Insidious: Out of the Further will only manage to change your mind for about thirty minutes. I’d say you’d be better off buying a ticket to something else…but if you’ve made it this far with either Insidious or Blumhouse…you probably wouldn’t be. Time will tell if the changing tides of independent horror force Blumhouse to change their ways. It would take some (no pun intended) further box office humbling. This movie doesn’t really deserve that fate. We’ll see if the next one does.
2.5/5
Insidious: Out of the Further Link
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