Insidious: Out of the Further

Generational trauma has become a 21^st century boogeyman in everything from horror films to Disney cartoons, but you can hardly blame the sixth entry in a scary-movie franchise from leaning on a familiar trope or two. Familiarity, in fact, is what makes the Insidious saga special, as it continues to involve screen legend Lin Shaye, who brings both heart and intensity to the spooky goings-on of Insidious: Out of the Further — at eighty-plus-years-old, she’s the franchise’s superhero.

The film opens in 1999, with young Gemma (Charli Penton, in a brief but moving performance) tends to herself as her out-of-it mother (Laura Gordon) slumps in a chair, passed out at the kitchen table. Gemma witnesses what appears to be her mother’s horrific suicide before we jump to the present, where adult Gemma (Amelia Eve, The Haunting of Bly Manor) is determined to do a better job as single parent to her own daughter, Maya (Island Austin, I Can Only Imagine 2). But the arrival of a trio of creepy senior citizens sends Gemma into a series of horrifying nightmares that leave her spiraling, forcing her to repeat her own mother’s erratic and borderline-abusive behavior.

During one of these nightmares, Shaye’s Elise appears, telling Gemma, “Find me on the material plane.” That involves visiting Claire (Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Nine Perfect Strangers), a tattoo artist who, for five minutes at a time, can swap places with Elise, who died years earlier. Elise warns Gemma that she has been targeted by fearsome cult leader Cyrus (Sam Spruell, H Is for Hawk) who wants to use Gemma’s abilities as a “courier” to bring souls from the Further back into reality.

The Further is explained as “the dark void between this world and the next,” and after seeing five of the six Insidious movies, I probably still couldn’t pass a Further pop quiz explaining the rules regarding the place/non-place, and how one enters/exits it. Suffice it to say that writer-director Jacob Chase (Come Play) offers just enough exposition — including a scene where Claire literally acts out how the third act is supposed to unfold — to get even first-time viewers up to speed.

Cyrus and his diabolical plans are something of a MacGuffin here; what really matters is Gemma both learning the truth about and letting go of her past, a tall order given that she’s still living in her childhood home where all the terrible moments of that past took place. Chase finds organic ways to set up his scary set pieces, whether it’s the dentist’s office where Gemma works (oral-care professionals everywhere no doubt resent the mileage that horror movies get out of the sound of a whirring drill) or a claustrophobic maze-like scene that coincidentally resembles a recent horror hit about endless spaces.

Less chilling are Cyrus’ Further-bound minions, a motley collection of creepy ghouls that play like rejected ideas for Beetlejuice’s afterlife waiting room. As they clutch and claw at Gemma, they make less of an impression than our hero’s one-on-one encounters.

2026 will rightly be remembered as the year when lower budgeted, independently produced horror films like Backrooms, Obsession, and It Ends changed the game and spawned a new wave of the genre, but Insidious: Out of the Further proves that a sturdy, studio-made chiller can still make audiences toss their popcorn even if it’s not breaking new cinematic ground.

Director: Jacob Chase
Screenwriter: Jacob Chase
Cast: Amelia Eve, Brandon Perea, Lin Shaye
Executive producers: Steven Schneider, Ryan Turek, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
Producers: Jason Blum, Oren Peli, James Wan, Leigh Whannell
Director of photography: David Garbett
Production design: Nick Bassett
Editing: Gregory Plotkin
Music: Joseph Bishara
Sound design: Francis Byrne, sound recordist; Paul Hackner, re-recording mixer
Production companies: Screen Gems, Stage 6 Films, Blumhouse, Atomic Monster
In English
106 minutes