‘Insidious: Out of the Further’ Review – Where Do We Go From Here?

I really wanted Insidious: Out of the Further to work because the idea at its center is actually pretty damn good. What if someone could bring things from the Further back with them? That gives the franchise a lot of room to play around with the rules of its supernatural world, and the opening suggests there might be something genuinely disturbing underneath all of this. Well, thats not what we got, and instead the movie spends most of its runtime setting up possibilities without doing much with them. There are a few creepy images, a handful of decent scares, and a third act that finally starts to feel like an Insidious movie, but by that point the movie has already made you wait far too long for something to happen.

The film opens in 1999, when a young Gemma (Charli Penton) witnesses her mother behaving increasingly erratically before watching her die by suicide in a horrifying scene in the shower. It’s a pretty nasty way to begin the movie, and it does establish that Gemma’s connection to the Further goes back much further than she realizes. Cut to the present, and Gemma (Amelia Eve) is now a single mother working as a dental hygienist while raising her daughter Maya in the same house where she grew up. She is also dating Nick (Brandon Perea), a police officer, and seemingly has managed to build a relatively normal life despite what happened to her.

Of course, that doesn’t last. Gemma begins experiencing some of the same strange symptoms her mother did, and eventually discovers that she can enter the Further. More importantly, she discovers that she can bring things from that realm back into ours. That’s a genuinely fun idea for an Insidious movie. The Further has always been one of the more recognizable parts of this franchise, so changing the rules and giving someone the ability to drag its inhabitants into the real world should have opened the door to some seriously creepy stuff.

Unfortunately, the movie barely takes advantage of it. There are moments where the Further looks genuinely unsettling, particularly when the film leans into strange silhouettes, distorted figures and the feeling that something is lurking just outside Gemma’s field of vision. The problem is that these moments are too scattered. The movie will give you a creepy image and then spend another twenty minutes explaining something or having characters talk about what might happen next. The atmosphere keeps getting built up and then immediately deflated.

That becomes the biggest problem with the movie’s pacing. The second act in particular feels like it’s spinning its wheels. Gemma investigates what’s happening, people around her react to it, more supernatural information gets revealed, and then the movie does it again. There isn’t enough escalation to make the situation feel increasingly dangerous. For a horror movie built around the idea of demons escaping from another dimension, the threat should feel like it’s getting worse by the minute. Instead, there are long stretches where it feels like everyone is waiting for the plot to catch up with them.

And the writing doesn’t help. The dialogue is frequently terrible, with characters explaining things in ways that don’t sound remotely natural. Some of the emotional conversations are especially stiff, which makes it difficult to care about the relationships that the movie clearly wants us to care about. Gemma and Maya should be the emotional heart of the entire story; a mother slowly realizing that the supernatural horror haunting her may also put her daughter in danger is an easy setup for genuine tension. Yet their relationship never becomes as involving as it needs to be.

On top of that the acting isn’t much better, it’s a shame because the cast is very committed but the material they are given is so razor thin. Amelia Eve is trying her best here to carry the movie as our lead and for the most part she does a convincing job portraying someone who is gradually losing her grip on what she thinks is real, and some of her facial expressions communicate more than the dialogue does. The problem is that the screenplay doesn’t give her enough material to work with. The character is constantly reacting to things rather than developing into someone with a particularly compelling arc.

The supporting cast suffers from the same problem. Brandon Perea and Maisie Richardson-Sellers are fine I guess, but their characters aren’t developed enough for some of their later emotional moments to have the impact the film clearly wants. Lin Shaye’s appearance as Elise Rainier is obviously welcome, and seeing her again immediately gives the movie a little more personality. Ironically, her presence also reminds you of how much character and charisma the rest of the movie is missing.

The scares are another mixed bag overall. There are a few that got me, I won’t pretend otherwise, and some of the imagery is genuinely creepy. The movie occasionally finds that particular Insidious visual language where something is just standing somewhere it absolutely should not be. Those moments work because they don’t need much explanation. You see something in the background and immediately understand that you don’t want to know what happens next. The movie rarely creates sustained dread. It wants the audience to be scared when the monster shows up, but doesn’t do enough to make us afraid of what might be hiding before it does.

The Further itself is also surprisingly underwhelming. This should be the movie’s biggest playground, especially considering the new rules it introduces. Instead, it often feels like a generic supernatural location. There isn’t enough mystery surrounding it, and there isn’t enough sense that we’re seeing something we haven’t already seen from this franchise. For a movie specifically about expanding what the Further can do, it strangely makes the Further feel smaller.

Thankfully, the movie finally finds some life in its third act. The final stretch is easily the strongest portion, and for a while I found myself thinking, okay, this is what I wanted the movie to be. The horror becomes more active, the supernatural threat finally feels like an actual threat, and the movie starts using its central idea instead of simply talking about it. There is more urgency, more interesting imagery and more of the frantic energy that should have been present much earlier.

The problem is that a good finale can only do so much when the foundation underneath it is this weak. By the time the movie gets moving, the characters haven’t been developed enough, the mythology hasn’t been handled particularly well, and the pacing has already drained much of the tension. It’s like the movie finally remembers what kind of film it is during the last twenty minutes.

That’s ultimately where I land with Insidious: Out of the Further. There is a good movie hiding somewhere in here, maybe it’s hidden in the Further. The premise is strong and Amelia Eve gives the film more than the screenplay deserves, and the third act contains enough actual horror to remind you why this franchise can still work. But almost everything surrounding those strengths feels underwritten. The dialogue is weak, the middle drags, the scares are inconsistent, and the mother-daughter relationship never reaches the emotional weight it should have had.

This is another weak entry in a franchise that doesn’t really seem to be getting any better, Insidious: Out of the Further feels frustratingly safe and unimaginative. It isn’t completely devoid of good ideas, and that finale almost saves it, but only almost. There’s just too much dead space between the moments that work.