Review: Where do horror franchises go to die? ‘Insidious: Out of the Further’ offers a clue

In the spring of 2011, a low-budget horror film stuck around for a while. Sandwiched between the launches of two other franchises transfixed by ghosts — “Paranormal Activity” and “The Conjuring” — “Insidious” didn’t command the box office in the same way as its spooky brethren, but it nevertheless boasted a nifty concept: the Further, a sinister realm between this world and the next in which the souls of the damned reside. Fifteen years and five films later, neither “Insidious” nor the Further are as fresh as they used to be. And with most of the original cast now long gone, the latest sequel often feels as cursed as that treacherous netherworld.

Set in 2019 and designed to be a direct sequel to 2023’s “Insidious: The Red Door,” “Insidious: Out of the Further” introduces us to new characters that most audience members will struggle to care about. “The Haunting of Bly Manor” star Amelia Eve plays Gemma, a single suburban mother raising her 10-year-old daughter Maya (Island Austin) while still trying to make peace with a harrowing upbringing in which her own mother suddenly became violently unhinged. (We’re not quite sure what transpired, but it has something to do with a disturbing incident in the shower.)

Gemma’s cop boyfriend Nick (Brandon Perea) reasonably suggests that perhaps her healing would happen faster if she no longer lived in her childhood home, but Gemma is determined to create happy memories to paper over the frightening ones from her youth. Unfortunately, she’s in the wrong kind of movie for such optimism.

No sooner does a lost flashlight she loved as a girl mysteriously reappear than Gemma’s nights suddenly start filling with creepy occurrences. Plus, during the day she keeps encountering three decrepit older people walking in unison down her street. Frightened that she may be plagued by the same mental illness that felled her mom, Gemma stubbornly refuses to believe anything is wrong. But once she’s confronted by spectral figures in her nightmares, she starts to wonder if something supernatural is going on.

Enter veteran character actor Lin Shaye, whose psychic Elise has been a series mainstay and a reliable provider of expository dialogue, despite the fact that her character died at the end of the 2011 original. Elise informs Gemma that she has a special gift for making contact with those in the Further — and, even rarer, the ability to bring those spirits back into our world. It’s why one particularly nasty demon, Cyrus (Sam Spruell), has marshaled his paranormal forces to lure Gemma into the Further so they can use her as a portal between realms. In the process, Gemma may also discover what caused her mother’s slide into insanity.

Writer-director Jacob Chase, who previously made the 2020 horror film “Come Play,” downplays gore in favor of jump scares and mildly diverting set pieces. “Out of the Further” is hardly the first movie to wring terror from a trip to the dentist. Chase proves more clever in turning Maya’s harmless couch fort into a claustrophobic labyrinth. But it’s a sign of the film’s dearth of originality that he quickly falls back on tired tropes, such as the discovery of a predictably disconcerting old VHS tape that contains incriminating grainy footage of a cult meeting in progress. (Why are cults always recording their group sessions?)

Another clear indication of a franchise running on fumes is that its most appealing element is now increasingly convoluted and tedious. Currently residing in the Further, Elise explains that Cyrus and his cronies plan to unleash their evil in the land of the living. That plot twist gives Chase the opportunity to send Gemma into the Further, dreaming up all sorts of frighteningly surreal environments. Alas, “Out of the Further” merely serves up exploding televisions and cut-rate smoke machines, making this seemingly menacing purgatory feel more like a bummer way station. Even Cyrus’ freakishly long nails and eerie voice are derivative of other horror movie boogeymen, but without their grasp of the uncannily malevolent.

The earlier “Insidious” films benefited from the magnetism of Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, who played the concerned parents of a young boy who fell into the Further’s clutches. Eve resists scream-queen clichés, but Gemma’s boringly typical tortured backstory is as flat as her wan chemistry with Nick. “Out of the Further” pays lip service to childhood trauma and mental health — fashionable themes for modern horror films — but Chase doesn’t have anything imaginative to say about these subjects, and his story’s eventual reveals fizzle emotionally because they’re tied to characters who are listlessly dragged between realms. “Insidious” once seemed energized by its exploration of a land inhabited by the luckless dead. Now the franchise is little more than a stiff itself.