Insidious: Out of the Further (2026) – Review

Quick Thoughts:

1. I may or may not have thrown my fist into the air and said something like “hell yeah” when a certain character made their first appearance.
2. Elise > The Avengers.
3. I love the Insidious franchise. I like watching nice people battle horrible demons.
4. Amelia Eve is a likable hero.
5. Grapefruit tattoos!
6. Pillow fort chase!

The Insidious franchise may be about horrifying spirits tormenting nice people, but there’s a comfort-food element to it that keeps me coming back. There are always jump scares, lanterns, fog, sleeping people, a final boss spirit who attempts to get into the real world, and it’s great. The franchise works because, at its core, it’s about innocent people dealing with something out of their control. It also helps that Lin Shaye plays Elise, a bada** ghost fighter who helps people because she’s the nicest and most noble person on the planet (her former partners Tucker and Specs are cool too). The Insidious movies are told with earnestness, and their PG-13 scares have helped them collect $741 million worldwide on an average budget of $8.5 million.

Insidious: Out of the Further focuses on what happens when a spirit from The Further (a terribly dark place between heaven and hell) attempts a jailbreak by using a “Traveler” (a person capable of astral projection) to escape the bleak dimension. The “Traveler” is a woman named Gemma (Amelia Eve), a hygienist who lives in a creepy house with her daughter Maya (Island Austin). Since it’s an Insidious film, the house is filled with shadows, long corridors, and rooms constructed to facilitate jump scares. Things take a turn for Gemma when a trio of maniacs starts lingering around the home (which isn’t haunted; moving won’t help anything), and she starts having nightmares in which she has to battle them whilst inside a never-ending pillow fort. The silent villains also visit her at her office, which results in a teeth-cleaning sequence that will be hard to forget. It would be a shame to spoil the rest; know that one night while traveling, Gemma comes across a super cool lady named Elise (Lin Shaye), who tells her to visit a tattoo artist named Clare (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), who can help her defeat the evil spirits with the help of Gemma’s police office boyfriend Nick (Brandom Perera).

Director/writer Jacob Chase sticks to the Insidious playbook by retaining the visual aesthetic (lots of fog) and maintaining its earnest storytelling. Insidious: Out of the Further isn’t trying to reinvent the franchise; instead, it’s a fun/familiar experience for Insidious fans who’ve grown to love the inventive jump scares and creepy spirits associated with the film series. In a unique twist, the $18 million production budget makes the film look super polished, which isn’t something normally associated with an Insidious film. James Wan directed the 2011 OG Insidious film on a $1.5 million budget, so it takes a while to get used to an Insidious movie with an actual budget (which is still small for most movies) to make The Further look like more than a dark room filled with fog. The lack of scrappy aesthetics works against the movie at first because the crisp aesthetic feels a bit generic. However, I quickly stopped worrying about the look and started enjoying that the film features a tattoo artist/medium explaining a plan with grapefruits (that have tattooed faces on them – it’s great).

The cinematography by David Garbett (Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy) does a fine job of setting up jump scares without leaning into comedic territory. There’s a fun shot from the perspective of a mouth that works really well when combined with squishy sound effects. The practical effects and prosthetics created by Adam Johansen (Evil Dead Rise) and Chiara Tripodi (Upgrade, Send Help) are perfectly gooey, with the highlight being a dental scene involving a silent villain with horrible teeth/gums/everything (Joseph Lopez).

Garbett’s dedication to delivering an Insidious film for the diehards will prevent it from pulling in huge box office numbers. However, with an $18 million budget and a dedicated fanbase, Insidious: Out of the Further will be another success for the folks at Blumhouse, who will want to keep their successful franchise rolling. I’d love to watch five more of them so I can witness Elise beating up more demons.

Final thoughts – I love it.