Is it scarier to be a dentist or go to the dentist? Whichever side of the chair you sit on, Insidious: Out of the Further is sure to leave your teeth itching with anxiety. Filling in for the Lambert family, Gemma Hall (Amelia Eve) is the one afflicted this time, thanks to a family curse (or gift?) handed down by her troubled mother. Traumatised after watching mum (Laura Gordon) dash her head against a bathroom wall as a child, Gemma grows up to become a mommy too, to little Maya (Island Austin). It’s little surprise that her upbringing continues to haunt her though – she still lives in the same house where the horrific death occurred.
Nightmarish visions and creepy old people lurking on street corners serve as a dark portent for a malignant (some might say insidious) force with dark designs upon the family. Learning that she possesses the ability to enter the Further, Gemma seeks help from a familiar face… Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), who’s now knocking about in the Further as an otherworldly good Samaritan. Can the murdered medium help Gemma before she succumbs to what once ailed her mother? Will Maya get the puppy she keeps nagging for? And what’s with the giant bag of grapefruit?
Jacob Chase’s sequel represents a fresh direction for the Insidious franchise, while staying true to the mythos built up in the preceding five films. Returning face Elise provides a link to the past, but Out of the Further largely forges its own spooky path. Nowhere is this more evident in the film’s first half, between a Backrooms-esque foray into a pillow fort gone wrong, or its franchise-best dental sequence. Those with a fear of tooth stuff beware, Out of the Further gets truly harrowing once it breaks out the dentists’ tools. It’s a promising reset of the status quo, but quickly loses its way when it becomes an Insidious sequel again.
Shaye’s Elise is a modern horror icon and all, but her return is where things start to get silly. We’re talking faces tattooed onto grapefruit, bodies mummified in pensioner nappies, and a strain of oldsploitation which is more gross than it is scary. Eve weathers the abuse like a champ, but she’s ill served by some of the corners she’s forced into. Poor Patrick Wilson can sympathise – The Red Door did him no favours either. Still, it could be worse, they could be Gemma’s cop boyfriend (Brandon Perea), who’s forced to deliver the line “she took it into the Further!” with a straight face, and entirely for the benefit of those too busy fiddling with their iPhones to pay attention to the film.
When it’s good, Out of the Further delivers some of the most inventively staged scares the franchise has ever seen. It’s a late-in-the-game sequel with renewed bite, but lacking in scale and polish.
INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER is out in UK cinemas now.
