The horror genre is full of terrifying afterlives, but few are as bone-chilling as James Wan's first Insidious film, released wide in 2011, is the left turn it takes partway through. It turns out the Lamberts' comatose son Dalton inherited the ability to astrally project in his sleep from his father, but inadvertently traveled too far into a dark realm called The Further, and is thus now being held captive by a powerful demon.
Josh Lambert (Insidious became a franchise, The Further remained a vital part of its mythology, with each subsequent film featuring another trip into its depths. This makes sense as The Further was many fans' favorite part of the first Insidious, and many go into each follow-up looking forward to a return visit.
While The Further is a cool, albeit scary place to spend a bit of time in for viewers, the characters within the Insidious movies certainly don't like going there, as the location holds many dangers. Additionally, the longer one spends there, the harder it is to get out.
Insidious' Netherworld The Further Explained
Existing somewhere between Heaven and Earth, The Further is a netherworld full of many doors to open, and many malevolent spirits to encounter. Thankfully, it's not a place people can normally go without doing so on purpose, unless they possess Dalton's ability to astral project, or a spirit from inside The Further somehow escapes and kidnaps or possesses a living person. It's not entirely clear why certain spirits end up in The Further, but most of the ones Josh and Elise have run into over the course of the series appear to have died violent or tragic deaths, or themselves been monsters in life. The Further isn't Hell, however, but it's likely the age to Hell could be found if one ventured far enough into the dark realm. ing this are the demons that appear to be its overlords.
Insidious: The Last Key, the most recent entry into the Insidious franchise, also confirmed that The Further is much larger than originally depicted. Elise enters an entirely different corner of The Further in The Last Key in order to battle the KeyFace demon, one that seems completely separate from the part controlled by The Lipstick Faced Demon that took Dalton in the original film. Considering that it's also shown that The Further exists outside of conventional time and space boundaries, it's possible that the amount of subdivisions within it is astronomical. With Insidious 5 in the works, perhaps fans will get to explore another new section soon.
