In Review: ‘Mutiny,’ ‘Insidious: Out of the Further’

Programming Note: We had too many reviews for one column this week. Check back tomorrow for coverage of It Ends and The Rivals of Amziah King.

Mutiny
Dir. Jean-François Richet
95 min.

With sincere respect to Jason Statham, who’s been the sturdiest of 21st century action heroes since barreling onto the scene with Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, there’s been little variation on the steely, no-nonsense brute he’s played from the beginning. Expecting him to change is pointless and unproductive, like asking Yasujiro Ozu to stop making dramas about widowers fretting about their devoted daughters inching past the marrying age. Each new movie is more about creating a context around Jason Statham, which generally comes in the form of action-comedies that play off his scowling deadpan (e.g. the Transporter and Crank movies, Spy, The Beekeeper) or opt to play it straight, no chaser (e.g. everything else). Though the floor is reasonably high for Statham, the latter films tend to whiff more often, because he doesn’t often have a director with enough craft to rescue them from relative anonymity. (I couldn’t tell you the first thing about A Working Man, for example, a film I reviewed here last year.)

The drum-tight, immensely satisfying new Statham film, Mutiny, is a cut above. Its French director, Jean-François Richet, was responsible for the 2023 Gerard Butler thriller Plane, another exercise in no-frills genre filmmaking that arrived in theaters in mid-to-late January and felt like the ideal reprieve from prestige season. Written by Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis, Mutiny is a stock piece of formula like Plane, with a plot that invites comparison to Die-Hard-in-a-boat scenarios like Under Siege or the dreaded Speed 2: Cruise Control. Yet Richet has the skill to complement Statham’s presence and give his film a force that feels like a sharp jab to the temple. There are goods to be delivered here. 

Taking Statham’s superior skills and instincts as a given, Mutiny wastes no time in casting him as Cole Reed, an ex-Marine who’s been serving as security in Bangkok for a billionaire shipping magnate on the verge of retirement. On the eve of a sale that will cede control of the company to son Kameron (Chaneil Kular), the magnate is killed in an ambush and the bad guys frame Cole for the crime. Needing to flee Thailand and take revenge for his boss’ murder, Cole gets a chance to do both when he fakes his way onto a shipping vessel and discovers that the crew is engaged in human trafficking. In bringing these scoundrels to justice, Cole finds an ally in Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis), a third mate who’d been roped into boarding the vessel at the last minute and makes this shocking discovery right alongside Cole. 

There’s a twist or two about who’s pulling the strings behind this dastardly operation, but Mutiny doesn’t take much interest in hiding these obvious reveals. It’s much more interesting in getting down to business, staging shootouts and nasty hand-to-hand combat sequences in the slim spaces between shipping containers and the various subfloors and large metal pipes that spread out on the vessel. The film adds another layer of tension and intrigue when an SOS goes out to a Navy ship and its captain (Adrian Lester) has to suss out which of the two sides to trust, given Cole’s fugitive status. But mostly, Mutiny is about Statham running through a couple dozen burly scumbags until they’re all dead or worse. It doesn’t reflect on revenge, it follows through on it. And when it’s over, so is the movie. — Scott Tobias

Mutiny storms multiplexes everywhere tonight.

Insidious: Out of the Further
Dir. Jacob Chase
106 min.

If a movie can be at once a huge, sequel-spawning hit and a little bit underrated, that description fits Insidious. In 2010, the James Wan-directed, Leigh Whannell-penned film played like a course correction to years of horror films defined by agony and graphic violence, one that duo had helped usher in with Saw in 2004. Along with Paranormal Activity (whose creator, Oren Peli, serves as a producer on the Insidious films), it helped reclaim a space for movies built around a more suggestive, less gore-dependent approach to horror, one that could sometimes be achieved by doing little more than changing a set’s lighting, turning up the fog machine, and bringing out the ghouls. (A first-rate cast, led by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, didn’t hurt either.)

It’s hard to pull the same trick off twice, however, and while Insidious has produced some not-bad sequels—it now totals six films, with a seventh on the way—the series has chased the inspiration of the first film with diminishing returns. Those returns took a notable downturn with 2023’s dull, but financially successful, Patrick Wilson-directed Insidious: The Red Door, which seemingly closed the book on the troubled family that’s been at the center of the franchise for the lion’s share of its entries. That makes Insidious: Out of the Further something of a fresh start. It’s also the first for which Whannell doesn’t have a story credit and the first in which he doesn’t at least make a cameo alongside Angus Sampson as one half of a semi-competent team of paranormal investigators.

Writer and director Jacob Chase (Come Play) takes the reins and, for the film’s first third or so, seems like he’s arrived with some fresh ideas via the story of Gemma (Amelia Eve), a dental hygienist with a troubled past who discovers she has the ability to move beings and objects back and forth between the material plane and the Further, the supernatural neverworld that’s home to restless spirits but also Elise (Lin Shaye), the medium who’s now the series’ only mainstay. A single mom, Gemma hopes to give her daughter Maya (Island Austin) a better upbringing than the one she received from a mother who died under mysterious circumstances. That past trauma hasn’t stopped her from moving out of a childhood home with a layout seemingly designed to produce maximum jump scares, however. Nor does a trio of spooky looking, silent, elderly new neighbors or the strange, out of body experiences she’s been having.

Chase plays his best cards early in the film, including an effective scene inside a couch cushion fort that takes a menacing turn (pretty much literally) and an office visit from one of the creepy seniors that doubles as a cautionary tale about dental neglect. But after a promising start, Insidious: Out of the Further moves on to business as usual, though the introduction of a new villain named Cyrus (Sam Spruell), in life a cult leader, suggests that the series, which has always owed a debut to Poltergeist, has moved on to Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Out of the Further is far from terrible. In fact, by the standard of sixth entries in horror series that peaked with their first installments, it’s pretty good. That’s a pretty specific qualifier, however. —Keith Phipps

Insidious: Out of the Further enters the realm of movie theaters tonight.