Insidious: Out of the Further — Inside the Personal Horror Sequel

Everyone has a story to tell, and Insidious: Out of the Further writer-director Jacob Chase truly epitomizes that expression.

If Chase were to pen an autobiography, there’d be chapters on everything from heartbreaking family dynamics, haunted houses and a canine Super Bowl commercial to anesthesia failure, a bittersweet box-office victory, shadowing a famously troubled blockbuster and debating editorial choices with the greatest living filmmaker.

In 2016, Chase won the “Crash the Super Bowl” commercial contest with his “Doritos Dogs” ad. Along with air time during the big game and a cash reward, the prize package included the chance to shadow a notable filmmaker on the set of his latest production. The movie in question? Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

“It was not a controversial set to be on when I was there. It was lovely. Whatever people think of his films, Zack Snyder is the sweetest, most talented person, and his actors love to show up for him,” Chase tells The Hollywood Reporter. “My favorite moment was Ben Affleck, in his full Batsuit and cowl, holding my laptop and watching my funny little dog commercial. He was just cackling and loving it. It was the most amazing visual.”

At the end of 2017, Chase released a short film called Larry on YouTube. It follows an Ehrmantrautian parking lot attendant who’s haunted by a monster that emerges through touchscreen gadgets. The short quickly drew interest around town, but Chase ultimately sold it to Amblin Partners as a feature adaptation, given Steven Spielberg’s involvement. Retitled Come Play, the film would eventually top the COVID-decimated Halloween box office in 2020.

Come Play’s asterisked release wasn’t exactly what he envisioned, but it did give Chase the unique honor of working closely with Spielberg during post. 

“He came into the edit, and my editor, Greg Plotkin, and I were just absolutely gobsnacked. I was like, Okay, I have to pretend it’s not Steven Spielberg and just treat him like one of my producers on this movie, because we had to argue about stuff. I’d hear him out, but I’d also pitch my version of it,” Chase recalls. “He was as lovely as people say. I don’t know how many other ways I can say that a dream came true — but freaking Steven Spielberg sat on my couch and worked on scenes with me. It was nuts.”

The silver lining of Come Play’s kneecapped rollout is that it won Chase two fans in Jason Blum (Blumhouse) and James Wan (Atomic Monster). Together, they developed multiple films in the subsequent handful of years. Some came close to getting made before another industry shutdown, the 2023 strikes, upended their best-laid plans.

In 2023, Insidious franchise leading man, Patrick Wilson, directed the property’s fifth installment, The Red Door, which went on to become the series’ highest-grossing entry at $189 million worldwide. That level of interest signaled to Blum and Wan that another chapter was warranted, so they tapped Chase to helm its follow-up, Out of the Further.

Chase’s pitch called for a soft reboot after the story of the franchise’s central family, the Lamberts, seemingly came to an end in Wilson’s preceding film. There’s still connective tissue to the past, including Lin Shaye’s Elise Rainier and the demons her spirit contends with in the purgatorial dimension known as the Further. But the film is really about a single mother, Amelia Eve’s Gemma, who’s trying to fend off the same malevolent forces that took her own mother’s life when she was a child.

Although the film is the sixth installment in a successful horror franchise, it remains deeply personal to Chase. It essentially serves as a tribute to his own single mother. He also wrote the script while his wife was pregnant with their almost two-year-old daughter — both of whom make cameos in the film — and the process led him to confront his own anxieties about becoming a father.

“The truth is part of my fear of being a dad was the fact that my dad was not around after the age of seven or so. That was when they divorced, and I just didn’t know what a dad did. It’s a role that I’ve learned about through friends’ dads and friends who are dads now,” Chase shares. “I probably grew up with this feeling of, You don’t really need a dad — and I know that’s not right. But in writing this movie, a dad character just never felt important to the story [about two generations of single mothers].”

Aside from Wan’s 2010 franchise-launching original, Out of the Further is now the second-most well-received Insidious film. And it’s already profitable, having grossed $60 million worldwide in its opening weekend, while pushing the franchise past the $800 million mark.

Below, during a wide-ranging conversation with THR, Chase also discusses his collaboration with Insidious creators Wan and Leigh Whannell, as well as his traumatic experience at the dentist that inspired one of the film’s several standout set pieces.

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It’s been an eventful summer for horror. Other horror directors I’ve talked to since Obsession and Backrooms view it as a rising-tide situation. But you can sense an undercurrent that it’s daunting to have to follow two historic box office performances. How do you feel about it? 

I don’t see it as a competition, really. I love those movies. It’s a great sign that audiences will go to movies if they are excited to see them, and then they’ll tell their friends about them. But I don’t think going to the movies is a finite resource. If it’s a good movie and people enjoy it, then they’ll go see another good movie.

While you did have a number-one film (Come Play) at the pandemic box office, I’m assuming you’d choose these circumstances over those ones any day of the week?

(Laughs.) Very much. I don’t think we can really count Come Play as number one at the box office. Half the theaters were still closed in the country. So, yes, I am very grateful. It’s taken me a while to get another movie onto the big screen, and I’m very happy that there’s not another raging pandemic right now.

You’ve developed multiple projects with producers Jason Blum and James Wan over the years. How did you first get on their radar? 

Jason really loved Come Play, and my first Zoom meeting with him was right after it came out. We specifically talked about my love of horror and haunted houses from my history of making haunted houses as live attractions. Jason had done some of that as well, and we talked about a very specific movie idea that involved a new take on a haunted house. We ended up developing that, and then we developed two or three more films over the years. A couple of them almost got made. 

As you know, it’s very hard to get movies made in this business. Various things can set them back. An actor would fall out, or when I was about to go shoot another movie, the strike happened. So there was a bunch of development, but the good thing is that I spent four or five years working really closely with the whole team at Atomic Monster and Blumhouse. So we all had a trust in each other, and by the time Insidious 6 came up, they very luckily trusted me with that franchise.

I don’t think it was tied to Jason or James, but you also developed a dog movie called Bad Boy with Ke Huy Quan. It was told from the POV of a serial killer’s dog. Did Good Boy and In a Violent Nature take the wind out of that movie’s sails? 

Yeah, sadly. My friend Travis Braun wrote Bad Boy, and he’s an incredible writer. We had actually made this [Doritos] dog commercial together in 2016. We developed that movie together for years, and I loved it deeply. Then Good Boy came out, and while the movie is great and really impressive, it broke my heart. The movies are fairly different, but ultimately, it is still a dog at the center of a horror film. I just couldn’t stomach spending the next year and a half of my life on something that I knew would just get compared to another very good dog horror film. It was hard though, man. It was a really hard decision for me because I genuinely love that script so much.

Hey, you never know what could happen years from now.

Yeah, it could still come about. We still talk about it, and I root for that movie with all of my heart. It blended everything I love: the horror genre, great characters and dogs. It was the perfect movie for me, so it was hard.

I’m sorry I reopened that old wound. 

No, it’s okay!

Insidious 6 then takes over the pole position. For a franchise with five previous installments, it’s got to be overwhelming to figure out a new place to go. Did you struggle for a while until you landed on the idea of entities pulling a Jumanji and entering the real world? 

(Laughs.) That’s a good reference. It’s funny because Jumanji is now coming back around full circle. The next one is coming back to the real world like the original.

I kid you not, Alex Wolff and I came up with the potential title of Jumanji: Full Circle way back in 2020, and I even floated it to director Jake Kasdan as being Alex’s idea. But they went with Open World instead. 

That’s so funny. They do market-research these titles significantly. [Writer’s Note: In Chase’s case, this likely explains how Insidious: The Bleeding World became Insidious: Out of the Further.]

Did the real-world premise actually unlock it for you?

I’ve been a genuine fan of Insidious for a while, but there were five of them. That’s a lot. Like many people, I was probably thinking, Do we really need another one of these movies? But honestly, what got me the most excited was less about the supernatural concept of demons coming to this world. It was more about the fact that the Lambert story with Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne had been closed out in the last film. So it really opened up this opportunity for me to tell an original story with new characters and new lore and this new ability. I wasn’t just taking on the same characters again, so it honestly felt like I was writing an original film.

Of course, there are Easter eggs, and elements that come back from the other films. But right from my first meeting, I was like, “I don’t think we should expect people to have seen all five movies. I don’t want to make a film that feels like you have to do homework before you see it. I want this to feel like it’s for a new generation of audiences.” I really loved what Bloodlines did with Final Destination where you didn’t need to have seen any of the other films. It was just a great film on its own terms. 

So that was my goal with this, and luckily, James, Leigh [Whannell] and Jason were all on board. Sony was also like, “Yeah, let’s leave the other five movies in the past and try to start fresh.” That becomes more challenging from a marketing perspective, but from a filmmaking perspective, it was quite liberating.

I read that you wrote this film while your wife was pregnant, and the film is about two generations of single mothers. I don’t think I caught any reference to Gemma’s dad or her daughter Maya’s dad. So for a writer-director who was about to become a dad, what’s the reasoning behind a dad-less story?

Yeah, I was about to become a dad while I was writing this, and I was terrified. I’m still terrified even though she’s almost two now. I grew up with a single mom, so that’s probably the real answer. It seems to be a running theme in things I write. The truth is part of my fear of being a dad was the fact that my dad was not around after the age of seven or so. That was when they divorced, and I just didn’t know what a dad did. It’s a role that I’ve learned about through friends’ dads and friends who are dads now. I probably grew up with this feeling of like, You don’t really need a dad — and I know that’s not right. I know that’s a weird way to look at it. 

But in writing this movie, a dad character just never felt important to the story. I was writing this single mom [Amelia Eve’s Gemma], and she’s desperately trying not to relive the sins of her own single mom. That’s all she was focused on, and it became unnecessary to think about any other parental figures in the story. 

On set, the cast and I certainly talked about backstory, and there were versions of the script where we talked about it. But it just never felt necessary. I was so much more interested in these three generations of women and how they’re all overlapping in their shared history. So it felt similar to what it felt like to become a parent.

Thank you for your candor. I’m sorry I reopened yet another wound. 

That’s why we make movies. It’s all therapy for us. 

Ahead of filming, did the franchise godfathers James and Leigh give you a motivational speech before leaving you alone for the most part?

I was closest with James before I got Insidious just because of the other stuff we’d worked on. He and I have talked at length about scares and his approach to filmmaking. He gave me total freedom in terms of the way I see the world, and I see the world differently than James sees it. This film also does not look like the other Insidious films, and had I been tasked with trying to make it look like a James Wan film, I would’ve failed. I don’t know how to do that. I only know how to shoot and block scenes the way I see the world. So he was very encouraging of me just playing within the sandbox as I saw fit. 

Leigh was also an incredible collaborator on this. He and I worked a lot together, and we would spend hours at his office. I would pitch him an idea for a scene, and we would constantly one-up each other. We would run around his office and try to scare each other with new ideas. We both share this unhealthy obsession with nothing ever being good enough. But as a team, we just kept pushing each other. 

He was on set for a couple weeks during production as well, but the biggest takeaway was him almost being on my shoulder, saying, “Could this be better?” Just hearing those words was all I needed. Everything can always be better. Nothing is ever perfect. If I set up a shot and the frame wasn’t perfect, I would hear his voice in my head, saying, “Could this be better?” And I’d think, Yes, it could be. So Leigh’s voice was in my head throughout the whole production, and it made the movie better.

Is this the first Insidious without Leigh and Angus Sampson’s characters? 

Yeah, they’re not in this movie, sadly. They did have a YouTube cameo in the fifth movie, but this is the first one that they’re not in at all. I love those guys. There was definitely talk about it. We had ideas, but it did not come to fruition.

You referenced the end of the Lamberts’ story earlier, and the film has a line that underscores it: “They finally closed the door on their demons for good.” I’m assuming you didn’t confirm the end of the Lamberts without getting the go-ahead from the brain trust first. So what’s the background on the inclusion of that line? 

It was definitely a discussion. I hope fans aren’t mad at this, but I just felt like the Lamberts had a happy ending in the last one. I didn’t want to see them go through more torture, at least not right now. Who knows, in ten years, maybe there’s another legacy sequel with them. When you care about characters as much as we care about them, it might be nice to revisit them in the future. But just as a fan, I didn’t want to see them go through this again. 

That specific line you’re talking about is followed by, “When one door closes in the Further, another one opens.” That was us making sure that there was some kind of tidbit that tied us to the history of the franchise and that this is the reason why this is happening now. It was just enough of a reference for people who love these movies and have been following along like I have been for 15 years. We didn’t want to make too big a meal out of it, because, again, I wanted people to be able to come into this version of Insidious, fresh, without having to know the whole Lambert history.

Did you have a traumatic experience at the dentist growing up? Is your childhood hygienist going to see this movie and realize what she’s done to you? 

(Laughs.) I got a cleaning recently, and I showed my current hygienist the trailer. She’s very proud of me and laughed, but she was like, “Don’t tell anyone my name and that I work on you.” When I was writing the script, I would ask my dentist and hygienist a lot of questions. I sat in the chair and asked, “Okay, what happens if the x-ray goes over here?” Then we’d take pictures of my mouth in different positions. But yes, I generally hate the dentist. I don’t know where it started, but I do have a sensitive mouth. 

The most traumatic experience happened in my 20s, and I already hated the dentist at that point. I was getting my wisdom teeth taken out by someone who is not my current dentist. But I guess he did not sedate me enough, because I woke up in the middle of getting my wisdom teeth taken out and apparently flailed my arms. I then hit the dentist’s hand, and the drill went through my lips, so I woke up again later with stitches in my lips. It was absolutely traumatic, and I waited years to go back to a dentist after that. 

Like you said earlier, movies are therapy.

(Laughs.) So I’m sorry that we’re painting dentists in a bad light here. I know they’re just doing their jobs. But the main character is a hygienist, and she’s good at her job. 

I’m always interested in the test screening process. What did you learn and apply?

A ton. The test screening process is a blessing and a curse. The biggest thing we learned was that the returning demons and entities were less important to people than we thought they would be. They were supposed to help Sony and the marketing department sell this movie to people because I was doing a more original story. 

During the test screening process, people liked those scenes, but they liked the other stuff more. They liked the original characters and the new villain more than seeing the old stuff. It’s a reminder of how smart audiences have become, especially horror audiences. They can tell when something feels like fan service, and they didn’t like when stuff felt like hollow fan service. So a lot of that stuff got removed from the film, and the movie got better for it.

You mentioned the big horror movies that came out this year. We tested the movie both before and after Obsession and Backrooms came out. And you could just tell that the audience’s attitude toward a horror film had changed in that amount of time. They expected something different and wanted different things. People were literally showing up to our test screenings in Obsession merch too. It had such a cultural impact, and it was just fascinating to see how younger audiences’ tastes had changed in that short month-long period. 

So it’s always tricky. I wish test screenings could be me just sitting in an audience and listening to people and seeing how they react. That’s the most valuable part to me as a filmmaker. The comment cards and all that stuff is very challenging, and then people weaponize that in different ways. But it’s all very useful, for sure.

You have an absolutely jaw-dropping credit on your résumé. Of all the sets to shadow, you happened to shadow one of the most tumultuous productions in Hollywood history: Zack Snyder’s Justice League. What highlights can you share from that experience?

I had an amazing time on that set. It was not a controversial set to be on when I was there. It was lovely. Whatever people think of his films, Zack Snyder is the sweetest, most talented person, and his actors just love to show up for him. The biggest thing I learned working with him was that a director doesn’t have to be this screaming person in charge. You can warmly bring everyone along with you to execute your vision, and I just loved the truly warm attitude on his set. I have so many amazing memories of just sitting with the cast and Zack the whole time. 

The reason I got that opportunity was because I made this commercial called “Doritos Dogs” that won the “Crash the Super Bowl” contest in 2016. And part of the prize was going to shadow Zack on the set of Justice League. Gal Gadot found out about it first, and she loved the commercial so much she started showing all the cast. So my favorite moment was Ben Affleck, in his full Batsuit and cowl, holding my laptop and watching my funny little dog commercial. He was just cackling and loving it while in the full Batsuit. It was the most amazing visual. There were so many moments like that. I wish I had some fun stories in terms of the later controversy of the film, but it was fascinating to see how a film of that scale gets put together.

In 30 years, when I read your memoir Cut to the Chase, there won’t be a Justice League chapter that reveals where all the bodies are buried?

(Laughs.) I don’t think so. I witnessed a few little moments that I don’t feel comfortable discussing, but I was only there for part of the shoot. When I left that set, I didn’t go home, saying, “Well, this movie is a mess.” I was like, “This is so cool.” Gal Gadot had just made Wonder Woman, and that ended up being so well-received. She was so into her character, and it was so great to see an actress be that passionate about the role. She brought out so many great new ideas when they were blocking scenes. So I really did learn a lot.

Did you assume that would be the most unexpected experience of your career until another director showed up in your editing room a few years later? 

(Laughs.) You’ve done your research. I’ve definitely had a few moments throughout my career of, Who am I? How am I in this position? And yes, meeting Steven Spielberg was absolutely insane. He had seen my short film, Larry, and it came out before it was super cool to be a YouTube filmmaker. I sold Larry back in 2018, which then became Come Play. Steven had seen the short film, and Amblin wanted to make it into a feature, which was amazing. A few different studios were interested in it, and of course, I went with Amblin because it’s Spielberg. It feels trite to say, but he’s my absolute idol. He’s the person I look up to most as a filmmaker, and that’s the career I wish I could have. I don’t know if that kind of career can exist in the 2020s. 

For a while, I would hear Spielberg’s thoughts on the short or the script through emails and calls. He’d give notes, but it was never in person. When I was shooting the feature, I’d get notes from his assistant or the producer, saying, “Oh, Steven loved this take. He loved this shot you did.” And I was like, I have to not think about the fact that Steven Spielberg is watching my dailies. 

Then, in post, that’s when he got the most involved in a wonderful way. He came into the edit, and my editor, Greg Plotkin, and I were just absolutely gobsnacked. I was like, Okay, I have to pretend it’s not Steven Spielberg and just treat him like one of my producers on this movie, because we had to argue about stuff. I’d hear him out, but I’d also pitch my version of it. He was as lovely as people say. He was passionate, and it was really fun seeing him get so energetic about ideas. 

One time, we were sitting on the couch together, and we were going over a scene. There was a piece where we both thought the Larry puppet didn’t look real enough. And I was like, “My thought is we’re going to add a little VFX to make the toes move a little bit so they don’t feel as fake in this one shot.” He then got up and had this huge burst of electricity. He was like, “Yeah, and then the toes can dig into the wood. If we CGI the wood planks, he’ll dig the wood out, and we’ll have dust flying.” He just went on this tangent, and it was the most amazing thing to watch because you could see that he’s still a kid. It felt like how I feel being on set, and the fact that he still feels that way with his experience and age was inspiring and incredible. 

So it was wild, and I hope I get to work with him again at some point. I don’t know how many other ways I can say that a dream came true — but freaking Steven Spielberg sat on my couch and worked on scenes with me. It was nuts.

You referenced how YouTube factored into your story. Curry Barker has bristled at the “YouTuber” label. The distinction he makes is that he’s a filmmaker who used YouTube as a platform to get his work out there. Do you relate to what he’s saying?

Yeah, I understand the distinction. I was never a YouTuber in terms of putting myself out there.

Like and subscribe!

Yeah, I never did any of that stuff. I was a filmmaker who made short films for film festivals. And when film festivals no longer felt like the be-all, end-all of how to get attention, I started putting stuff on YouTube. It just became an outlet for my work, but it’s an important outlet. If I was starting today, I would probably be making stuff on TikTok and Instagram because I wanted to tell stories from a young age.

Curry and Kane [Parsons] had films on YouTube, but I don’t necessarily think of either of them as YouTube personalities. I certainly am not. I followed more in the footsteps of David F. Sandberg. Sandberg made shorts with his wife, and I did the same thing with my wife and my friends. I made countless short films both in college and after film school. Larry just happened to be the first one that allowed me to make Come Play. But it’s not for lack of dozens before that while trying to show people that I could make stuff.

To close on Insidious, when your daughter is old enough to be curious about the movie you birthed around the same time as her, what day on set will you tell her about first?

It will probably be the day that she had a cameo as a demon baby in the movie. There’s a one shot with her and my wife. They’re among the many ghosts of the Further that I kept a close-up of in the film. I know it’s a little bit of nepotism. But I have some great set pictures of me holding her in her old-fashioned dress. 

In terms of other really important days I’m most fond of, shooting the pillow fort was very special, because it was such an intimate set. It really reminded me of when I used to make those short films with my friends. It was just me, the DP and the actors trying to make good choices in this tunnel. 

There was another moment where Amelia [Eve] and I both cried toward the end of the film. It was one of her audition scenes, and she really did a great job with it. There was a lot of pressure going into a big important scene like that, and she just killed it. We both just felt a real sense of accomplishment, and we collectively released so much stress because a lot was riding on that big climactic moment.

My job as a filmmaker is to inspire people to see the vision and to try to do their best work. And I believe the best ideas can come from anywhere. There were several days where the best ideas would come from anywhere. The third AD had this idea for a scare in the middle of me blocking it, because I had given people the freedom to be able to talk to me about that stuff. I genuinely wanted this to feel like it’s everyone’s movie, and that particularly awesome scare got shot. So I will always remember the communal, summer-camp feeling of it. It was a great time.

Look, I know it’s the sixth Insidious movie. Who cares? It’s just a franchise movie. But we didn’t treat it that way. I really treated Out of the Further like I was trying to make the Citizen Kane of Insidious movies, and it felt that way on set. 

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Insidious: Out of the Further is now playing in movie theaters nationwide.