Creators of 'Backrooms' join legendary horror franchise for late-summer scare

"Insidious: Out of the Further" [Provided by Sony Pictures]

A legendary horror franchise with $740 million in global box office earnings is heading to cinemas at the end of summer. "Insidious: Out of the Further" follows the malevolent entities of "The Further" — the realm of the dead — as they find a way to cross into the human world, unleashing a brutal new wave of terror.

Opening Thursday, the film boldly upends the mythology that has defined the "Insidious" series. The evil spirits that once preyed on humans from within "The Further" finally break through into the real world, raising the stakes far beyond anything seen in previous installments and delivering suffocating tension throughout.

The film also brings back some of the franchise's most iconic demons — Lipstick Face, the Black Bride and Key Face among them — raising audience expectations for an expanded mythology and overwhelming horror.

Particularly notable is the involvement of the team behind "Backrooms," the film that sparked a global horror craze with its primal dread of familiar yet deeply unsettling spaces. "Backrooms" was directed by Kane Parsons, whose original YouTube series of the same name accumulated 150 million views before being adapted into a live-action feature. Made on a modest budget by Hollywood standards, the film earned about 400 billion won ($283 million) worldwide, making it one of A24's all-time highest-grossing releases.

With these masters of spatial horror joining forces, the film blends the eerie, oppressive atmosphere of "The Further" — the spirit world at the heart of the "Insidious" series — with the everyday-space dread that made "Backrooms" so effective, dissolving the boundary between the real world and "The Further."

"The Further" itself, the series' signature realm of the dead, radiates its trademark menace through darkness and fog-shrouded landscapes, while the horror bleeds into the mundane spaces of everyday life. In one sequence, the series' new protagonist Gemma (played by Amelia Eve) is conducting a routine dental examination when an X-ray reveals a grotesque oral structure no ordinary person should have, plunging her into an unpredictable nightmare.

The dental setting — with its examination chair and sharp instruments already primed to trigger instinctive unease — melds with the supernatural horror to produce a visceral, spine-tingling dread that feels immediate and inescapable.

In addition, demons that materialize without warning in the most ordinary, familiar spaces pull the film's terror beyond the screen and into the audience's own reality, creating a powerful sense of immersion.

As the spirits once trapped in "The Further" begin crossing into the human world through Gemma's unique abilities, the film drives home the fear that any space — from the home that should be safest to the everyday workplace — can become a stage for horror in an instant.

"Insidious: Out of the Further" opens in cinemas Thursday.

balme@heraldcorp.com