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

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Set us as preferred 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.Movies We’ve mapped out 27 of the best movie theaters in L.A., from the TCL Chinese and the New Beverly to the Alamo Drafthouse and which AMC reigns in Burbank.No sooner does a lost flashlight she loved as a girl mysteriously reappear than Gemma’s n...