Flasz On Film

When it comes to long-standing franchises, producers are seemingly incapable of finishing on a high note. It’s always death by a thousand duds with them and I have to say that I hold general audiences as complicit in this debacle as well because by showing up in droves to watch these incoherent and frequently bloated pieces of self-indulgent, artistically bereft and borderline idiotic claptrap they send Hollywood signals of approval. At the end of the day, in the post-Ebert world where mainstream criticism has been effectively supplanted by client journalism and red meat influencers who are happy enough to be invited to press screenings that they wouldn’t dare say anything negative about a major studio release for fear of getting blacklisted, it doesn’t matter what people equipped to disburse culturally informed opinions on the matter say about any movie. Only numbers count. 

And the numbers for Insidious: Out of the Further are in… and they suggest, much like the numbers for The Conjuring: Last Rites implied a little while ago for that other money-spinning franchise, that we are going to see quite a bit more movies in the future with Insidious in the title. And unless they bring back some of the creative voices who could actually understand where the pulse of this franchise was, like Patrick Wilson and James Wan, this franchise will continue in artistic free fall where it currently is. 

When Insidious: The Red Door brought home an order of magnitude more in revenue than it took to produce, it was a no-brainer, according to the logic I outlined above, that a follow-up would be on the way. At least, the producing team (still consisting of Oren Peli, Jason Blum, James Wan and Leigh Whannell) had enough acumen to understand that the Patrick Wilson-directed movie was in its own right a conclusion to the main story arc of the series. Together with Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2, The Red Door formed a trilogy of familial trauma that worked astonishingly well. However, the Whannell-driven series also included other entries that leaned much more heavily into the Ghostbusters-meets-Poltergeist lore the series established while tracing the intergenerational horror of its main characters. Which gave them an easy starting point for this piece. The only problem is that just because you can graft a new movie onto the Insidious platform doesn’t mean you should, let alone that is an idea that would on the whole enrich the franchise. 

And that’s how we have found ourselves here, in 2026, with a brand new movie in the Insidious franchise, which behaves exactly like the sixth instalment in a long-standing horror series typically would be expected to behave. Much like the misfire that was Insidious: The Last Key, Out of the Further is nothing but a flailing attempt at capitalizing on what is considered canon in the series–that post-Poltergeist cocktail of haunting in a domestic setting with a flavour of familial trauma–with only a rather haphazardly executed change of clothes. We follow Gemma (Amelia Eve), a woman haunted by her troubled past of witnessing her mother’s suicide (which to our trained eyes will immediately register as foreshadowing and planting seeds for a forthcoming twist), wo lives with her young daughter and tries to make a life for herself. That is until stuff begins to happen. Weird-looking old people begin descending upon them, dreams turn into nightmares, yadi-yadi-yada. If you saw the trailer (and I can only imagine that you did because the marketing for this movie must have cost considerably more than the movie itself judging by its volume and density), you will have a good idea of what to expect. We’ll hang onto Gemma’s shoulder as she touches base with the returning clairvoyant Elise (Lin Shaye), who now permanently lives in the netherworld, and we’ll be introduced to a brand-new demonic presence whose turn at the wheel it is this time. To keep it fresh(ish), the filmmakers will tell us that on this occasion demons are making their way into the real world and that there is a cult of pensioners high on laughing gas living next door who are making it all happen and the movie will infrequently indulge in dentistry-based cringe horror while it sets up its more familiar jump scare staples. Gemma will have to overcome some inner fears, find out some stuff about her mum, protect her own daughter (as the franchise seems to dictate) and the whole thing will end up going down that Poltergeist route much more directly than you’d perhaps expect. Roll credits. 

Look, when it comes to movies whose titles would typically require a number that’s closer to ten than it is to one (if they weren’t conveniently camouflaged by way of colonification), it’s impossible to expect wonders, or even fundamental freshness. Sometimes you get to be pleasantly surprised by the odds are never in your favour in this regard. So, by admitting that Insidious: Out of the Further goes through the motions and supplies exactly what I’d expect from a chapter in a franchise that’s as old as a respectable bottle of whisky I’d be merely stating the obvious. I don’t expect fireworks or novelty. I’m happy with retreading familiar ground as long as the ritual of re-engaging with this world does something to me: a cool new idea (even a little one) tucked between the ones I already know; the thrill and suspense innate to the journey into the Further; a set of characters that look as though they had more than two dimensions. I’m not asking for much. 

Alas, Insidious: Out of the Further delivers very little and gives me only scarce reasons to recommend it to anyone, fans of the franchise and newcomers alike. It’s a rather workaday example of a horror film that was concocted on the quick and thus ended up not only rehashing old ideas (which is fine conceptually) but it did so in a way that lacked even the tiniest spark of excitement. Put simply, I think that this movie shouldn’t be titled with so many words that suggest an incursion into the seemingly supple lore of the franchise. Four words are too many. Instead, I believe that a more true-to-life depiction of the actual content of the film would have been encapsulated in a single-word alternative: In-Tedious.