There must have been a rule placed on the making of  this. In the film even when guests are at your house only one lamp will be on. The gloom must be maintained-even when danger is not afoot.  The film should have been titled “Insidious: The Perpetual Despondency”. The sixth film of the franchise stays well within its perimeters of the previous Insidious film storytelling. It proudly doesn’t go further to advance the scale and expand the scope of the Insidious multi-dimensions universe. The well-timed jump-scares and brooding still standing in the blackout corner of the room are still there.  Boundaries are not pushed, tropes not challenged. What has worked the last five times is waged to work again. The latest film has nothing new to stay but to maintain its hallmark tropes, but the payoff has eroded and audiences are waiting for them. and Demons and dead entities crave. “The house isn’t haunted, it’s me that is.” cries the protagonist. Yea we know. All that is seen in this has been done before and used before.  We are definitely not out of the further of recycled material. 

Lin Shaye is again here to provide old person wisdom and guidance. Her time in the film is the bright shining star of the perpetual gloomy film. We are deep in aesthetic and light on content.  A dentist is a covenant traveler. A traveler that is able to bring things from the further. A rare gift that is used mostly for ex-machina than character development. The dialogue is uniquely dull. The editing is jumbled and what is supposed to frightening and scares audiences is lost when predicable, because it has all been done before. There is a faint attempt at an enduring story of mother and daughter and then daughter with her own daughter, and tries to redeem her relationship with her lost mother but it gets lost with the vapor attempt at a love story. It’s not shallow storytelling- it’s hollow. 

If there’s going to be another of the “Insidious” films to emerge the dynamic needs to change. A different trajectory needs to take hold.  Fans and audiences of the franchise are too jaded and seasoned to know what is coming. Especially, when the antagonist is a diabolical dead cult leader with long black to conceal his face with a cache of ghoulish followers. The film is about bringing something from the other dimension, bringing something back from the further , but it should be going back to its roots of why it was so effective ten years ago, it was the psychology of it, not the formula. 6.5/10