Insidious: Out of the Further Review: The Further Should Have Stayed Closed This Time

I like the Insidious movies. Not every film in the series has been brilliant, but The Further, the creepy demons and that horrible red-faced man have given me enough sleepless nights to keep me coming back.

Unfortunately, Insidious: Out of the Further gave me something completely different.

Boredom. This is the sixth film in the Insidious franchise, directed by Jacob Chase, and it introduces a new family rather than returning to the Lamberts. The story follows Gemma, a single mother who discovers that she can enter The Further and bring its trapped souls back into the real world. That sounds like a good idea for an Insidious movie. The problem is that the idea sounds much scarier than the movie actually is.

Gemma lives in her childhood home with her daughter, Maya. She carries painful memories involving her mother, and those memories begin returning when strange figures appear around her. We soon learn that Gemma has a connection with The Further and possesses an ability that makes her extremely important to the demons living inside it. And when I say important, I mean the entire movie refuses to look away from her.

Everything is about Gemma.

Gemma’s childhood. Gemma’s trauma. Gemma’s powers. Gemma’s relationship with her daughter. Gemma’s mistakes. Gemma’s suffering. Gemma entering The Further. Gemma coming out of The Further. Even the demons seem to have forgotten that other people exist. LOL

Amelia Eve gives the role everything she has, so I cannot blame her performance. My problem is with how the character is written. Gemma becomes so centred on her own pain and abilities that I struggled to connect with her emotionally.

The film clearly wants us to feel sorry for her, but after some time, I simply wanted someone else to take control of the story.

Anyone. Even the dog would have been acceptable. 

The relationship between Gemma and Maya should have been the emotional heart of the movie. There are moments when you can understand Gemma’s fear of repeating the mistakes made by her own mother, but the film keeps returning to the same emotional point without taking it anywhere interesting.

I understood that Gemma had trauma. You did not have to remind me every ten minutes. 

Okay, there are a few sudden noises, strange faces and visually creepy moments. The dentist sequence is uncomfortable, and Jacob Chase knows how to frame a dark room properly. But being uncomfortable is not the same as being frightened. 

At no point did I feel afraid to look at the screen.
At no point did I consider leaving a light on afterwards.
At no point did I regret watching it alone.

So please stop calling everything with a demon and a dark corridor a horror movie. This felt more like a supernatural family drama that occasionally remembered it had an Insidious logo attached to it. The Further used to feel mysterious and dangerous. It was a place where every dark corner could hide something horrible. Mind the gap between the living world and the demons, please.

The villain, Cyrus, should have made the story feel more dangerous. Instead, his plan never became interesting enough for me to care. He has followers, powers and a connection to Gemma’s abilities, but none of it creates the fear or tension that the earlier films managed with much simpler ideas.

Sometimes, the more you explain a horror world, the less frightening it becomes.

Then we have the characters. At one point, it genuinely felt like an all-women Insidious movie. We had Gemma, Maya, Gemma’s mother, Clare, Elise and several other women moving the story forward.

And then there was Nick, Gemma’s police officer boyfriend. The one stupid cop. LOL.

Before someone gets angry, the women were not the problem. An all-women horror film can obviously be brilliant. The problem was that almost every character existed either to explain Gemma, protect Gemma, warn Gemma or become involved in Gemma’s supernatural problems. Nick mostly walks into situations looking confused because he believes in logic while dating a woman who regularly visits another dimension.

Logic left this relationship several demons ago.

The movie also brings back Lin Shaye as Elise Rainier. Seeing her again should have given me that nostalgia hit I was waiting for. Elise is one of the most recognisable characters in the entire franchise, and Lin Shaye still brings warmth and authority whenever she appears. But even her return felt wasted.

Elise appears through Clare, a tattoo artist who can temporarily exchange places with her. It is an interesting idea, but it feels more like the movie finding a technical excuse to include Elise than giving her a meaningful return. I wanted the old characters to make me remember why I loved this series.

Instead, Elise felt like a familiar face being used to assure us that we were still watching an Insidious movie.

This is exactly why some movie franchises should be left alone. A successful series does not need another chapter simply because audiences recognise its name. Sometimes the story is finished. Sometimes the characters have given us everything they can.

And sometimes The Further should remain closed.

I will give Jacob Chase credit for the direction. The film looks polished, the lighting works and a few sequences show that he understands how to build an unsettling atmosphere.  Just the story simply did not give that direction enough to work with.

I kept waiting for the movie to become frightening, emotional or completely mad. Instead, it stayed trapped somewhere between family trauma and franchise horror without doing either one strongly enough.

I felt like I had wasted my time. I rate Insidious: Out of the Further 3.5/10, and most of those points are for the direction and visual presentation.

Should you watch it? No. If you love the Insidious series, protect those memories.

Some things are better left upopened.
This movie was probably one of them. LOL.
aKi Malik