The first two INSIDIOUS movies consistently make my scariest movies of all-time list, especially INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2, which gave us the dreadfully frightening Black Bride and enough nightmare fuel to make every creak, whisper and corner shadow feel personally aggressive for days after viewing that 2013 James Wan masterpiece.
INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER, the sixth film in the franchise, gets an A for effort. Landing? More like a solid C.
And honestly, I’m not even sure that’s entirely the movie’s fault. At this point, the material feels tapped. The Further has been furthered. The red doors have been opened, closed, reopened, repainted, and probably inspected by a county building official. There are still some legitimately scary moments here, but the movie spends so much time remixing old franchise iconography that it starts to feel less like a fresh nightmare and more like INSIDIOUS AVENGERS, where the big bad in OUT OF THE FURTHER is yelling amidst the fog, “Scary monsters from the last five films…ASSEMBLE!
The story follows Gemma, a young mother raising her daughter in the house where she grew up. Which, based on how Gemma grew up, that house should have been purposefully burned down before she ever had a family of her own. Gemma discovers she can travel into The Further, the purgatorial realm of lost souls at the center of the INSIDIOUS universe. But because horror movie powers are never just cool little hobbies, her ability comes with a nasty catch: things from The Further can cross back with her, attach themselves to the living, and make everyone’s day considerably worse.
Jacob Chase, who directed COME PLAY, directs this one and wrote the screenplay. The story comes from Chase and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, with James Wan, Leigh Whannell, Jason Blum, and Oren Peli among the producing team. Amelia Eve stars as Gemma, while Lin Shaye returns as Elise Rainier. The main cast also includes Brandon Perea, Sam Spruell, Joseph Lopez Lester, Laura Gordon, and Maisie Richardson-Sellers.
There’s a decent hook there, and Chase clearly understands how to stage a scare. A few sequences absolutely work. One of the creepiest involves a living room fort made from couch cushions, which is unsettling until the practical part of my brain kicked in and asked, “When did this couch expand to 97 cushions?” It was like RC Willey meets BACKROOMS.
Still, for much of the movie, I felt like the whistling Leonardo DiCaprio meme from ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.
Whistles. Snaps fingers.
Oh look, the Black Bride!
Oh look, the weird smiling lady who killed her family with a shotgun!
Oh look, the red-faced demon from the first film, still in desperate need of a manicure!
That’s kind of fun for die hard fans, sure, but it also underlines the problem. INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER keeps pointing at things that used to scare us, hoping recognition will do the heavy lifting. Sometimes it does. Mostly, it just reminded me how much better and weirder the early movies felt when this mythology still had mystery.
The movie is at its best when it stops trying to tour the franchise museum and simply tries to scare us. There are a few solid jolts, some nicely built tension, and a truly nasty reminder of why going to the dentist and flossing regularly are important. Please note: do not floss with human hair. You’ll see.
In the end, I had fun because I went with a big group, and watching this kind of movie with a crowd can feel like hitting up a haunted house with the crew. People jumped. People laughed. People grabbed armrests. That communal scare energy still works.
But as a movie? More hype than haul.
The first two INSIDIOUS films had real dread. They had atmosphere. They had images that lodged in the back of your brain and refused to leave. OUT OF THE FURTHER has moments, but it also has the unmistakable feel of a franchise checking its own boxes.
Let’s close this book, James Wan.
Grade: C
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