‘Insidious: Out of the Further’ Review: Some Things Should Stay in the Further

I have always had a soft spot for the Insidious franchise. The first two films remain some of my favorites from the supernatural horror boom of the 2010s, and I’ll even go to bat for Insidious: Chapter 3. There was something creepy and exciting about this world when we were first introduced to The Further. Unfortunately, six movies in, Insidious: Out of the Further left me wondering if this franchise has anything new left to show us. And that’s probably my biggest issue with the movie: it really didn’t do a whole lot for me.

This time around, the story follows Gemma, a young mother who discovers she has the ability to travel into the Further, the purgatorial realm of lost souls that has haunted the franchise since the beginning. But her ability comes with a dangerous catch: Gemma can bring whatever she encounters there back with her into the real world. Once the demons of the Further realize what she can do, they see an opportunity to turn our world into their playground. 

Now, there are things here that work. There is a mother/daughter relationship between Gemma and her daughter, Maya, which gives the movie an emotional center that I was able to get behind, and Amelia Eve and Island Austin are both good with what they’re given. When the movie slows down and actually focuses on that relationship, there are pieces of something more interesting underneath the familiar supernatural chaos. A lot of that comes from Gemma’s own haunting past and the difficult relationship she had with her mother when she was around Maya’s age. Her biggest fear isn’t necessarily what might follow her home from the Further, but the possibility that she could become just like her own mother. She desperately wants something different for Maya, and that fear of repeating the same mistakes gives their relationship a little more weight. In a movie filled with literal demons, it’s Gemma’s fear of becoming her mother that ends up being one of the more interesting things haunting her.

Outside of that mother/daughter relationship, we’re introduced to Gemma’s boyfriend, Nick, played by Brandon Perera, who is essentially just along for the ride. He becomes useful during the third act, but before that, he falls into the familiar horror-movie role of the boyfriend who struggles to believe anything Gemma is going through. Naturally, he pretty much thinks she’s losing it until he finally encounters one of the demons himself. Nick’s presence also raises a question the movie strangely never seems interested in answering: where is Maya’s father? We get virtually no context about him, what happened between Gemma and Maya’s father, or how Nick fits into this family dynamic. Considering how much of the movie revolves around motherhood, generational trauma and Gemma’s fear of failing Maya, it feels like there was more territory to explore there. Instead, the movie bypasses it entirely.

The biggest problem is that everything surrounding them feels like something we’ve already seen before. By now, we know how an Insidious movie works. Strange things start happening. Someone sees something lurking where it shouldn’t be. We get creepy figures, loud scares, trips into dark rooms and, inevitably, another journey into The Further. That formula was incredibly effective when the franchise started, but six installments later, simply rearranging those same ingredients isn’t enough. 

Now, that doesn’t mean Out of the Further is necessarily a terrible movie. There are scares that work, the performances are solid and fans of the franchise will certainly recognize everything that makes an Insidious movie an Insidious movie. But that familiarity is also exactly what holds it back.

Coming into a sixth installment, I wasn’t expecting the franchise to completely reinvent itself. I was, however, hoping it would take some kind of risk. Give us a different type of haunting. Expand what The Further actually is. Introduce a threat that doesn’t feel like another variation of something we’ve encountered before. After spending this much time in this universe, there should still be corners of it that feel dangerous, mysterious and unexplored.

Instead, Out of the Further feels content playing the hits. Even Lin Shaye pops up once again as Elise, continuing the franchise’s determination to find a way to bring her back for almost every installment. Her appearance is a fun bit of familiarity for longtime fans, but it also speaks to the larger problem I had with the movie: Insidious seems hesitant to completely move on from what worked in the past. Maybe that familiarity will be enough for some fans, but considering how much I love those earlier movies, I wanted this one to remind me why Insidious felt so different in the first place. There was an opportunity here to take the mythology of the Further somewhere new, and instead I walked away feeling like I had watched another variation of the same movie this franchise has been making for years.

It’s not terrible. It’s not even completely without merit. It’s just a bit too familiar, and six movies into a horror franchise, familiar might be the scariest thing of all.

Rating: 2/5

Disclaimer: All images used in this review are © of Sony Pictures and are included for review, commentary, and editorial purposes only.

Insidious: Out of the Further arrives only in theaters this Friday, August 21.