Insidious: Out of the Further Review — Amelia Eve and One Unforgettable Scene Make This Worth Seeing

Even with the Lambert family saga led by Patrick Wilson’s Josh already coming full circle after Insidious: The Red Door in 2023, the franchise is far from over. This is especially true if you watched the post-credits scene, suggesting that the otherwise sealed red door painted black didn’t remain shut forever after all. Besides, Insidious movies don’t cost Blumhouse Productions a fortune to make, thanks to Jason Blum’s strictly low-budget model that has worked wonders for the past five films since the franchise’s inception in 2011, grossing from nearly $100 million to over $189 million worldwide and totalling more than $740 million.

Despite the last Insidious movie still making sizable profit, it rather ended on a disappointingly tepid note, making me wonder whether the franchise has run its course. The new movie — Insidious: Out of the Further — boasts an intriguing subtitle, where the franchise manages to find a fresh angle to keep it going. And that is, the demonic entities from the astral realm of the Further would cross over into the mortal world. Imagine the terrifying chaos if the human population were to endure such an otherworldly threat.

So, for the first half of the movie, franchise newcomer Jacob Chase (Come Play, and TV’s The Girl in the Woods) gets off to a promising start in the creepy 1999-set prologue, detailing how Gemma, as a child, faces something’s wrong with her disturbed mother at their Pittsburgh home one night. What follows is a set-piece that showcases Chase’s flair for deliberate tension and dread, coupled with the franchise’s signature methodical camera pan. He may have lacked James Wan’s timing and technical precision seen in the first two movies, but Chase still deserves credit in this movie.

Fast-forward two decades, Gemma (Amelia Eve) is now a single mom working as a dental hygienist, and has a young daughter named Maya (Island Austin) living in the same childhood home inherited from her late mother.

The Sofa-Fort Scene Is the Best Thing Here

The story soon sees Gemma suffering from nightmares, one of which highlights the most memorable horror scenes in the movie: the otherwise harmless sofa cushion fort turning into an endless tunnel of darkness, beginning with Gemma curiously crawling into the space, only to find herself trapped with seemingly no way out.

Chase insists the scene be prominently illuminated by a flashlight beaming across the pitch-black atmosphere, making the scene feel more claustrophobic as the camera tracks the increasingly panicked Gemma navigating the narrow, maze-like pathways. We only see what she sees, prioritizing the terror of the unknown over heavy reliance on cheap jump scares to make a point.

Where the Sequel Loses Its Nerve

As the movie progresses, Gemma discovers that her frighteningly vivid dreams are astral projections, prompting her to search for answers. This brings her to Claire (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), a tattoo artist who serves as a conduit, allowing Gemma to communicate with Elise (franchise mainstay Lin Shaye) from the afterlife.

The plot thickens, introducing a main antagonist played by Sam Spruell, who has something to do with Gemma’s traumatic past. Supposedly the “King of the Further”, whose goal is to use her to enter the land of the living with his legion of demonic entities, his character comes across as a horror villain lacking the formidable presence, unlike the iconic Lipstick-Face Demon who previously dominated the franchise.

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It doesn’t help that the second half begins to lose steam with repetitive scares, and even more so when it comes to both Gemma’s and the central antagonist’s respective plans against each other. This is particularly evident with the initial promise of the movie’s Out of the Further subtitle, only to be disappointed by Chase’s failure to capitalize on its potential.

The biggest problem lies in the movie’s limited geography and action, sticking to the same old haunted-house setting, resulting in the chilling what-if scenario of The Further extending beyond its purgatorial dimension ending up as a disappointingly scaled-down climax. For a horror movie that wanted to embrace a new direction, the last thing this Insidious: Out of the Further needs is undermining the scope of its premise.

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The latest movie in the decade-long franchise is best described as an uneven cinematic entity of two halves: one that’s riveting at first, before the other part gradually sinks into the Further of missed opportunity. Still, fans of the franchise won’t want to miss this one!

Insidious: Out of the Further opens in theaters everywhere on August 21, 2026, and is rated 16 (H L V).