A mother finds herself under siege by a powerful and dangerous ghost in the slightly generic yet well-done, effective, and often intense Insidious: Out of the Further, written and directed by Jacob Chase.
Yes, I’m as surprised as you are.
I haven’t been the biggest fan of the Insidious franchise, started by Saw’s James Wan and Leigh Whannell. I outright love the first entry, released in 2011. It set the stage for their truly A-plus The Conjuring (another series that lost its spark over time) and told a much better and smarter ghost story than the meh Dead Silence. It had a sharp understanding of the haunted house film and delivered some great scares that trusted the audience. Sure, some silliness with the demon (that plagued the franchise), but The Further, the space between life and death and filled with murder ghosts, is a downright creepy liminal space. Anyway, Insidious was damned good.
The sequels (two and five, aka The Red Door) and prequels (three and four, aka The Last Key) are mostly… fine. They have some great moments and solid scares, but suffer from missed opportunities and some downright dumb choices by characters and crew (I’m still annoyed that The Last Key keeps talking about the decaying prison next door and never does anything with it). Maybe because it was coming in with decidedly low expectations, especially after the atrocious The Red Door, but goddarn it, Insidious: Out of the Further works. 
Does the Jacob Chase-written-and-directed film reinvent the scare flick? Nah, but it does enough with a more aggressive telling and turns to expectations to keep things interesting, and it’s sort of with a vim and vigor to keep moving and surprising. Chase previously made Come Play, which used the tropes of the imaginary friend in highly effective manners, and he brings that fresh look at what could be stale steps to the fifth sequel in the franchise. There’s an intensity in the sequences (enough dental horror to make Orin Scivello, DDS wince… oh, mama), and they are very well designed. The ghosts and a slew of weird living people are creepy as hell, using the right angles and stares to give the heebie-jeebies. I really loved a claustrophobic sequence that hits into a closer liminal method akin to a more up-close Backrooms and Dave Made a Maze. Some aspects are a few steps off from a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, and I’m all for it. As a New Line release run by her brother Robert, the series often featured series mainstay and face Horror Grandma Lin Shaye as seer Elise (of course she’s back, and used just right). And, like Come Play, may a little Poltergeist DNA be in there, too.
The story follows Gemma, a single mother of a 9-year-old, still holding onto the pain of 20 years ago when her mom lost her sanity and killed herself in front of her when she was also nine (the opening sequence is a banger, setting the tone and atmosphere wonderfully). As played by Haunting of Bly Manor’s Amelia Eve, She’s still living in the same East Liberty (Pittsburgh neighborhood) home, and without giving the ups and downs away, she gets herself targeted by an actually dangerous (stakes!) ghost with murder plans. It’s great watching it unfold, going a different direction than the previous films, going bigger and weirder. These films often climax with the adult lead wandering around The Further with a ton of walk-through scare-house boo scenes; but after that requisite walk, it goes up a few steps. You go, Mr. Chase. The villain Cryrus, played by Sam Spruell, is especially creepy – love the voice. And his acolytes (the old people in the marketing) get under the skin, and their methods are different.
Chase and his cinematographer, Dave Garbett, bring a suitably uncomfortable and tense look to the film, one of slight decay and glances into negative space. Chase controls the camera with an understanding of the audience’s expectations and shapes them. Damn, do I love the look of The Further across these films, and I rather like how Chase uses it. However, this is one of those films that annoys me for never letting the lights act like life, trying to create tension with excessive darkness. It takes me out and makes me yell in my mind, TURN ON THE DAMNED LIGHT, with its unnaturalness.
Is it thin in character, spelling out directly and keeping there, with maybe a little more but not much to the main character? Yeah. Is it overall basic in a year with Obsession, Backrooms, Camp Miamsa, and Marama? Absolutely. But does it work within its own confines as part of a faded series, in a soft reboot? It’s simple and straightforward, scary, and spooky.
Jacob Chase’s Insidious: Out of The Further is a solid entry in an increasingly disappointing series, giving in to making something work that can be used to continue if they so deign. Chase makes some great set-pieces and an engaging villain. It’s surface-deep, but nothing wrong with a good time, letting oneself just have a more innate scare within.