‘Insidious: Out of the Further’ Review: Latest Entry in the Franchise Serves Up Genuinely Terrifying Setpieces Despite a Convoluted Final Act

If you’ve always been terrified of dental work and the idea of someone poking around your pearly whites with sharp tools, you’re not alone. With “Insidious: Out of the Further,” the sixth entry in the infinitely inventive “Insidious” horror franchise, writer-director Jacob Chase is unashamed to declare that he shares your fears, while having some gross-out fun with this widespread irrational phobia.

A largely set-piece driven chapter with a wobbly story but several impeccable vignettes that drill into our deepest bedtime anxieties, “Out of the Further” (like the rest of the films in the series) follows a group of unlucky humans plagued by demonic spirits that live in a dream space called “The Further,” and occasionally travel into the real world to hijack pockets of life and energy. And some of the film’s most impressive frights that veer into serious body-horror territory take place in a dentist’s chair.

It’s not that Gemma (Amelia Eve), the young single mother and dental hygienist that leads “Out of the Further,” has any sadistic intentions in the vein of some “Marathon Man” or “The Dentist” characters, even though this critic is convinced Chase had those films in mind to a degree while slightly flipping the script on them by making the patient, not the provider, the main perpetrator. In one of the most effective set pieces of the film, an old guy (David Morgan) with rotting teeth, and quite possibly a second set of much sharper fangs, terrorizes and injures Gemma while she scrapes off sizable heaps of slimy residue from the evil dude’s mouth, and even pulls out strands of hair as he silently stares at her. (Feel free to either gag along or close your eyes.)

The patient in question is part of a trio of dead people strolling around Gemma’s neighborhood, one of them styled in such a Hagsploitation manner that it’s impossible not to think of the lasting impression that Aunt Gladys (“Weapons”) recently made in horror. The entities continually lurk into Gemma’s house and into the eyes of her precocious nine-year-old daughter, Maya (Island Austin), trying to intimidate the family of two. It’s actually curious that Gemma chose to stay in that same house after the events of the terrific opening sequence set in 1999, with the young Gemma (Charli Penton, brilliant in a short role) witnessing the brutal death of her vulnerably haunted mother through an inexplicable series of supernatural happenings. Twenty years later, she wants to be a different kind of mother to her school-obsessed daughter, encouraging her quirks (like her insistence of building little crawl spaces out of couch cushions) and being emotionally present. But her kindly and supportive cop boyfriend Nick (Brandon Perea) rightfully insists that the duo should perhaps move out of the house when Gemma’s habitual nightmares intensify as she goes deeper into the Further in her dreams, occasionally and unwittingly bringing back a spirit or two. But little does Nick know it is her, and not the house, that is haunted.

While “Out of the Further” doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining the idea of “The Further” to those unfamiliar with the franchise, the concept is still basic enough to follow—it’s a world supernaturally gifted people like Gemma travel to while sleeping, a world crawling with demons all looking for a living being to latch themselves onto. While Gemma is in the Further, the movie unleashes a number of polished sequences, the most frightening one being Maya’s crawlspace turning into an airless, tight, and claustrophobic maze that wouldn’t be out of place in “Backrooms.” With effective sound design and customary jump scares, “Out of the Further” knows exactly what it wants to be for a while, an atmospheric, vibes-based horror film that will make any nervous sleeper check under their bed before turning the lights off. You know, just in case.

But the story’s shortcomings rise to the surface in due course, especially when the franchise’s beloved once alive, now deceased Elise (Lin Shaye) enters the picture as the ghost who helps people like Gemma find their way back home. In this chapter, Elise communicates to the living via Clare (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), a talented tattoo artist and a selfless medium invested in helping Gemma and Maya to get rid of Lester (Joseph Lopez), the main demon who wants to make our world a playground for his kind. The scene where Clare tries to explain Elise’s plan to Gemma, Nick, and Maya using a bunch of cut-up oranges makes so little sense that one wonders if the writers were trying to convince themselves first and foremost that the convoluted scheme is actually quite simple. (It’s far from it.) If the first two (and the best) “Insidious” movies have taught us anything, it is that the fear of losing one’s family, and knowing that the only way is out is through, is enough of an emotional terror. While Chase’s movie captures that feeling soundly for a while with both Eve and Austin painting a beautiful mother-daughter portrait, it also makes you wish for a leaner resolution in its later moments.

Still, there is a lot of old-school horror fun to be had here, with costume designer Liz Keogh Palmer and the team of make-up artists especially deserving some credit with their mind-blowing creations of the various evil spirits. Many of them might just make an appearance in your consciousness when the lights go off.