Writer-director Jacob Chase is uniquely qualified to distill what really scares audiences. In this chapter, the sixth movie in the franchise, a woman named Gemma (Amelia Eve) is able to astral project like others in the series, but she can bring back demons from The Further to the real world, creating some new avenues for scary situations — all while processing trauma passed down from her mother (Laura Gordon) and protecting her own daughter (Island Austin). It’s a different angle than previous “Insidious” films, and Chase says that was by design.
Anyone in the audience is going to ask, ‘Why are we still making these movies? This is too many “Insidious” movies, right?’ So my big pitch coming into it was, ‘This cannot feel like just another “Insidious” movie. This has to feel like it’s a fresh start.’ It’s an original film that happens to have ‘Insidious’ in the title was my goal.” What makes Chase, whose last horror feature was the 2020 chiller “Come Play,” a unique horror storyteller?
After starting his Hollywood career early as an actor and indie director, he found another purpose, one that blended his love of scares with a philanthropic component. He built Bigworm Sherwood Scare, a charitable haunted attraction, by hand in Northridge, Calif. For two years, he operated the 1,800-foot maze, with all of the proceeds going to cystic fibrosis research and aid.
The attraction ran from 2012-2014. Developing in-person scares taught Chase about the mechanics of fear that would serve him while directing. It was so much fun, and we all loved it, and it became a big hit, and so we kept doing it.
It’s really where I learned how to scare people. We would do these rehearsals before we opened to the general public where I would be watching on cameras, or I’d follow them and see where moments landed, where they got scared, where they felt suspense that I wasn’t expecting. That dark corner that, for us, was just a corner you turn, we saw, ‘Oh, they’re scared to turn down that corner.
How can we use that to our advantage?’ What I found was that film is surprisingly similar to the live attraction experience, in that you are taking the audience by the hand and you’re guiding them. In real life, you’re guiding them through a series of hallways, but in a movie, you’re guiding them with the camera. It’s about creating that misdirection and those false expectations, and hopefully surprising them in ways that they didn’t expect.” One element his past as a scary maze operator was especially helpful for is the jump scares the series is known for.
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