“Insidious: Out of the Further,” in theaters Friday via Sony Pictures Entertainment, is a soft reboot of the popular horror franchise. Writer-director Jacob Chase is uniquely qualified to distill what really scares audiences.
In this chapter, the sixth movie in the franchise, a woman named Gemma (Amelia Eve) is able to astral project like others in the series, but she can bring back demons from The Further to the real world, creating some new avenues for scary situations — all while processing trauma passed down from her mother (Laura Gordon) and protecting her own daughter (Island Austin).
It’s a different angle than previous “Insidious” films, and Chase says that was by design.
“Obviously I am a big ‘Insidious’ fan,” he says. “There’s also been five movies, and that’s a lot, and it’s too many. Anyone in the audience is going to ask, ‘Why are we still making these movies? This is too many “Insidious” movies, right?’ So my big pitch coming into it was, ‘This cannot feel like just another “Insidious” movie. This has to feel like it’s a fresh start.’ It’s an original film that happens to have ‘Insidious’ in the title was my goal.”
What makes Chase, whose last horror feature was the 2020 chiller “Come Play,” a unique horror storyteller? After starting his Hollywood career early as an actor and indie director, he found another purpose, one that blended his love of scares with a philanthropic component. He built Bigworm Sherwood Scare, a charitable haunted attraction, by hand in Northridge, Calif. For two years, he operated the 1,800-foot maze, with all of the proceeds going to cystic fibrosis research and aid. The attraction ran from 2012-2014.
