We came home from the theater still arguing about a flashlight. That is not the note we expected to leave a sixth Insidious movie on, but here we are.
Insidious: Out of the Further is rated PG-13 (and it shows), and it is directed by Jacob Chase, who also wrote the screenplay from a story he built with David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Chase made Come Play, which tells you a lot about the kind of scares he likes: contained, domestic, built around a kid and a light source.
Before we went, we rewatched all five previous films in one week. That was not required homework, but it changed the movie for us, and we think it would change it for you too.
There are implications in this one that only land if the earlier entries are fresh. That said, the Insidious franchise has always been strangely user-friendly. If you dropped into the middle of it, you would still be fine. There are teeny tiny recaps built into this one, maybe thirty seconds of catch-up, and they do the job.
What Insidious: Out of the Further Is Actually About
Amelia Eve (The Haunting of Bly Manor) plays Gemma, a single mother raising her daughter Maya in the house she grew up in. Gemma discovers she can travel into the Further, and that she can bring what lives there back out with her. That is the whole hook, and the official synopsis gives away basically all of it in one run-on sentence with no periods in sight. One breath, apparently.
Island Austin plays Maya. Lin Shaye returns as Elise Rainier, obviously; she is the only actor who has appeared in every single installment. Sam Spruell (Legend, Fargo) plays Cyrus. Brandon Perea, who a lot of people know from Nope and Twisters, plays Nick, Gemma’s boyfriend. Maisie Richardson-Sellers plays Clare, the person who helps with the Further of it all (there is always someone who helps). Joseph Lopez turns up as Lester, and if he looks familiar, that is because he was the passenger in Passenger earlier this year.
The film picks up two weeks after the events of Insidious: The Red Door, which is a real shift for this series. Films three and four were secret prequels set years before the first movie. This one moves forward.
Is It Scary? Honestly, Not Very. Is It Gross? Absolutely.
Was it scary for us personally? Not really. Maybe one solid jump scare, and the rest lands in that very PG-13 space where a wide audience is clearly the goal. These are mass appeal movies, and they always have been.
But here is the part that surprised us. There are no massively graphic kills in this thing, and it is still nasty. Meaghan put it best:
It’s kinda gross, dude. There are multiple scenes where I’m like, ew, yuck.
The makeup work in this franchise has always been strong, and this entry keeps that streak going. Some of the monsters are genuinely messed up.
James Wan said this one reminded him of the scares he was trying to build in the first movie. Watching it a few days after rewatching the 2010 film, we think that tracks. It is not mimicking the original, but the DNA is there. Same producers, same instincts, same understanding that a hallway is scarier than a monster.
Lin Shaye also said in the promo run that she read the script at two in the morning and got scared enough to hide it in a basement closet. At two in the morning, we would probably also chuck that script out a window, so we get it.
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The Set Design and Lighting Are the Best Things in the Movie
This is our favorite technical thing about Insidious: Out of the Further, and it is not close.
There is a sequence you have already seen in the trailer where Gemma has to push through a pillow fort. On paper, that might be “meh”. It is a fort made of pillows; just push the pillows. She tries, but she can’t. It’s like there are metal walls behind them, and the film takes the time to show her beating on it, kicking it, throwing her weight at it. That patience is what makes the scene work; claustrophobic, stressful, completely earned.
Then there is the trick they pull with the rooms in the Further. The camera moves around what looks like a normal four-walled space, and then a wall just stops existing. The fourth wall dissolves, and suddenly the characters are standing in the middle of nothing with three walls and a ceiling floating in black. Very clever, very cheap in the best way, and it is exactly the kind of stagecraft this series has always been good at.
The three creepy old people from the trailer (the acolytes of Cyrus, the cult leader running things on the other side) get the same treatment. They hide under the floorboards (for reasons explained in the movie), which is a genuinely smart use of a house.
Speaking of houses: Insidious really likes a nice house. The Lambert home and Lorraine’s place anchor the first two films; the third moves to a huge apartment tower, the fourth spends real time in Elise’s childhood home, and the fifth parks itself in Dalton’s dorm room.
Every one of these movies takes a space that is supposed to be safe and makes it unsafe while someone sleeps in it. Arthur made a point we keep chewing on, which is that this instinct is a byproduct of Blumhouse more than anything else. Contained locations, low expenditure, maximum tension. It might have started as a budget constraint but turned into a house style.
And the lighting. There is a lot of flashlight work here, both for the scares and to sell the Further as a vast black nothing where the beam only gets you so far. Which brings us to the flashlight argument.
I am just happy that for the first time in six movies, they bought a functional flashlight.
Arthur said, and he is right. Every previous entry gave us the dimmest fading-battery beam imaginable. This one actually illuminates things. Good job for replacing those batteries.
Spoilers Ahead: The Lore, Keyface, and That Mid-Credits Scene
Gemma’s story starts with a cold open from her perspective as a child. She comes home, and her mother Ingrid (Laura Gordon) is in terrible shape, erratic and frightening. We both thought Ingrid was already a ghost; that is how bad she looks.
She chases Gemma with a kitchen knife and then kills herself in the bathroom while her daughter watches. Nick later floats the idea that Ingrid was abusing substances, and we do not think that is what happened. We think that is the assumption Gemma built to survive it.
What Gemma actually inherited, from her mother, is astral projection with an upgrade. She can pull things out of the Further, and the entities can force it too. She can also send them back, which Meaghan described as “uno reverso, get back in there,” and that is genuinely the most fun the film has with its own rules.
Cyrus, in life, was a cult leader. He has been stalking Gemma’s family and has gathered followers on the other side, which fits the weird hierarchy the Further has been building for six films now. Everyone over there wants out. Cyrus just got the closest.
Then the mid-credits scene. Keyface, the demon with keys for fingers from Insidious: The Last Key, shows up and opens a closed door with his key finger, which reframes the whole franchise.
The doors in the Further hold different things behind them, some manageable, some catastrophic. The Red Door was about closing them. If Keyface is the one entity that can open what has been sealed, he is the actual problem.
I think he might be the Thanos of this.
Arthur said, and once you understand it with the whole worldbuilding of the movies, it all makes sense. Keyface has been shadowing Elise since she was a child, and there is a reason for that.
We do not know if there is a master plan in place or if this is just good instinct, but every entry has pushed a little harder on things trying to cross over, and this one pushed the furthest without quite succeeding. Something bigger is coming.
Our Biggest Gripe: No Specs, No Tucker, No Spectral Sightings
There is no Tucker and no Specs in this movie. Not a cameo. Not a background gag. Nothing.
Angus Sampson and Leigh Whannell have appeared in all five previous films. Even The Red Door found room for them on their ghost-hunting channel. Breaking that streak stings, and we are annoyed about it.
We understand the structural reason. Clare fills their slot as the in-between person, and unlike Specs and Tucker, she actually has an ability, which the plot needs. Fine. It still costs the movie something; those two carried the humor and the warmth of this franchise for over a decade.
Our Rating for Insidious: Out of the Further
We both landed on 5.5 out of 10, which is an enjoyment score rather than a scariness score. Six felt slightly too generous, and five felt too harsh.
We went in with low expectations and came out pleasantly surprised, mostly because of the performances and how carefully it builds on established lore. But strip away the new ability and the core formula is unchanged: something happens to someone with powers, they go into the Further, they come back, they figure it out, things get locked away (do they, though?).
Add some clunky dialogue, including a “when one door closes, another opens” line delivered so on the nose that we both winced at, and you have a solid theatrical night out rather than a franchise high point.
The demon design alone almost bumps it up. Cyrus is tall and imposing with a blindfold and a real sketched-out old cult leader energy. There is a blue thing with big horns that we both wanted more of. There is a gold and black variation that looks like a cousin of the Lipstick-Face Demon, on screen for a split second.
And the Lipstick-Face Demon himself shows up at the eleventh hour like the diva he is, basically announcing, “I’m here, bet you thought I wasn’t going to be in this one.” The Bride in Black comes back too, which we have not seen in a few installments.
If they ever make a movie that just explores the demons and the politics of the Further, we are first in line. Until then, this one is a good time with a great flashlight.