I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the fantasy of “The Magic Faraway Tree,” the horrors of “Insidious: Out of the Further,” the character study of “The Rivals of Amziah King” and the drama of “Late Fame.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Insidious: Out of the Further,” the sixth installment in the supernatural “Insidious” franchise now playing in theatres, a young mother’s explorations into The Further, the world of lost souls, causes her to be haunted by malevolent forces.CAST: Amelia Eve, Brandon Perea, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Lin Shaye. Directed by Jacob Chase.
REVIEW: More of the same from the “Insidious” series after a few wobbly years, “Insidious: Out of the Further” plays on nostalgia with the return of franchise favorite Lin Shaye but freshens things up with a revolving door between the worlds of the dead and the living, and the introduction of a charismatic and chatty villain who resembles a cross between Ozzy Osbourne and an extra from a Marilyn Manson video.
A sequel to 2023s “Insidious: The Red Door,” the new film centers on Gemma (Amelia Eve), a young mom living in her childhood home with daughter Maya (Island Austin). Plagued dark and intense dreams that make her lose track of time, she is slowly losing her grip on reality.
At least she thinks they’re dreams. “Ever since she was born, it’s been just the two of us,” she says. “We were really happy … until I started having these dreams.”
Turns out, she is astrally projecting into The Further, a purgatory of lost souls. “You have a rare gift,” says psychic medium and paranormal investigator Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), “the ability to travel into the realm between this world and the next one.”
Gemma’s “rare gift” comes fraught with real danger. “You can do something I didn’t know was possible,” says Elise. “You can bring demons back to the human world permanently.”
When The Further’s malevolent inhabitants see a pathway through Gemma to the real world, the boundary between their dominion and ours is breached. “When the dead rise,” says Elise, “it’ll be the end of the living.”
A 2020 “Science of Scare” study declared “Insidious,” the 2010 movie that kicked off the franchise, contained the most frightening jump scare ever. The intensity director James Wan captured in that sequence, unfortunately, has been diluted in the five subsequent films.
“Insidious: Out of the Further” does have its moments. Gemma’s journey through her daughter’s labyrinthine coach cushion fort is an effective exercise in claustrophobic horror, there are some mild jump scares, general uneasiness and icky tooth terror that may put you off scheduling a dentist appointment any time soon. It’s a bonus points that the creepy stuff is created using practical effects and that it maintains a connection to the franchise lore while being a standalone film. But there is nothing that comes close to matching Wan’s terrifying image of the Lipstick-Face Demon appearing behind new father Josh Lambert in the first film. Perhaps familiarity with the franchise tropes has created, if not contempt, then a mild disinterest for the secrets of The Further.
“Insidious: Out of the Further” rides the line between freshening things up and fan service, but, despite the introduction of new characters, it feels like it is out of new ideas.
What do you do when you write yourself into a corner after just one successful sequel? If you are Leigh Whannell, the screenwriter of the first two “Insidious” frightfests, you look backwards and pen a prequel.
The poor haunted Lambert family (Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor and Barbara Hershey) of the first two films are nowhere to be seen in “Insidious: Chapter 3.” In their place are the Brenners, widower Sean (Dermot Mulroney) and teenage daughter Quinn (Stefanie Scott), the kind of teenager who wears a Pixies t-shirt even though their best material was recorded years before she was born. They’re first family to encounter the spooky demons of the netherworld known as The Further that spooked the Lamberts.
Seeking to make contact with her late mother the youngster gets in touch with psychic Elise Rainier (Lin “The Godmother of Horror” Shaye). The mystic warns her about the dangers of dabbling in the great beyond—“You have to be very careful. If you call out to one of the dead all of them can hear you.”—and soon Quinn is attacked by malevolent entity (is there any other kind?) who steals half her soul. To rescue the girl Elise does battle with a demon hungry for human souls.
“Insidious: Chapter 3” is the first of the series not to be directed by James Wan who is apparently too busy making movies like “Furious 7” to return to the lo-fi scares of “Insidious.” In his place is Whannell, who did double duty as screenwriter. He understands the inner workings of these movies better than anyone, but where Wan ensured the first two movies were thrill rides that played on primal fears, Whannell‘s is the stuff of carnival haunted houses. It’s a quiet movie peppered with nightmarish images of creatures with no eyes and giant clawed feet embellished by old school effects created with make-up, sound and lighting. Some are quite effective and there are a couple of scary, inventive thrills late in the game, but far too much of the film is devoted to set up. The first hour and a quarter is a prologue of sorts for the handful of shocks that comprise the climax.
Shaye comes up with several ways to battle demons not even Dr. Peter Venkman had thought of but most of “Insidious: Chapter 3” isn’t scary enough to warrant any ghostbusting at all.
