Rotting Teeth, Pillow Forts, & Demonic Acolytes: ‘Insidious: Out of the Further’s’ Production Designer On Conquering The Further [Interview] • Living-Dead
News
Rotting Teeth, Pillow Forts, & Demonic Acolytes: ‘Insidious: Out of the Further’s’ Production Designer On Conquering The Further [Interview]
Insidious: Out of the Further’s Nick Bassett opens up about bringing to life the horror sequel’s disturbing scares, contributing to the famous Further, and pushing boundaries in big ways
Production design can make or break a horror film, especially those that are so dependent upon evil environments that need to properly evoke terror from their audience. The Insidious franchise, which is now six films deep, has found success for many different reasons. However, the Insidious films wouldn’t be what they are without the Further, a supernatural purgatory for lost souls that triggers all sorts of sinister supernatural pandemonium. The Insidious films have always known how to do a lot with a little when it comes to production. That being said, the franchise’s newest entry, Insidious: Out of the Further, is especially impressive in this regard. Some of the franchise’s most striking and scary design elements are present in Insidious: Out of the Further.
The film’s production designer, Nick Bassett, is no stranger to horror, having previously worked as the production designer on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and Evil Dead Rise, Fear Street: Prom Queen, and Ash vs Evil Dead. With Insidious: Out of theFurther now in theaters, Bassett breaks down why the Insidious franchise is so important to audiences, why practical and in-camera effects are fundamental, bringing the infamous “pillow fort” sequence to life, and so much more.
DREAD CENTRAL: You have such a rich history of production design work on horror betweenEvil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin’sThe Mummy, andFear Street: Prom Queen. What is it about the horror genre that’s particularly appealing to you from a production design perspective?
NICK BASSETT: I think a lot of production designers probably find that you do a job and then it leads to another, and then another. I’m sure there are people who do hospital dramas and police dramas and then stay on that path. I was lucky because the first TV series I got to do was , which was great. I got to work with Sam Raimi on my first big production design studio show. I’d worked as an art director for years, but production design was still new for me. Sam was my first director on something like that, which was a dream come true. That sparked something for me because he’s a very unique director. Everyone who loves his movies will try and unpack why that is, but he does ignite this energy as a director, so working with him was just very cool. The humor in that show was just so good.
Ash vs Evil Dead
One thing leads to another, and I was able to work with Sam and Rob [Tapert] again on Evil Dead Rise, which then opened up other opportunities. What I love about horror as a genre is its ability to develop an important backstory and to understand the importance of its characters. You’re sort of doing drama, horror, action. You’re doing all these things at once. So as a head of an art department, we’re working with stunts, special effects, makeup, and costume really closely. We don’t work in isolation. We’re always crossing over with other departments. It’s a challenge, but it’s also very addictive.
In horror, every department is so critical. The lighting, the camerawork, what we’re doing in the art department, what the costumes are doing, what the creature designs are doing. You’re always being asked to collaborate. I think that is extremely addictive as a field. When you do a straight drama, it’s quite different. There are half as many meetings to figure things out. We still need to pick the colors and make a great set, but we’re maybe not as interlaced with everyone else. Working in horror is never boring. The expectations are always increasing. On something like Insidious, there’s not only a backstory of five other movies that you need to try and catch up on, but there’s this desire to keep things updated. There’s a whole new family with a backstory and history and flashbacks. There’s almost no end to the challenges.
TheInsidiousfranchise already has such a rich history with such a specific visual style. Is that helpful when doing a film like this?
NB: I think so. I think, for me, it’s kind of interesting because what do you do when you to get the sixth movie in a franchise? Do you pick it up and change it a lot? What I would say to that is we go with the director’s vision. Jacob [Chase]’s been working on the script longer than I’ve known about the project. He brought me in and then really my job is just to figure out what he wants it to be and what excites him about it. Then I try to take that and bring it to life. In something like Insidious, he’ll have had a lot of conversations with executive producers, like Leigh Whannell and James Wan. I’m not necessarily privy to all these conversations, but I’m still learning through the director’s vision. So the first thing, for me, is just to make sure I’m listening. My biggest job is to listen to what story the director is trying to tell and to listen to what they really need in order for this to be a hit for the franchise.
I think there are some versions of this that could have gone off in a completely different tangent and become a whole new thing, but then the fans maybe think that it doesn’t feel like an Insidious movie. We’re always juggling that. It’s quite a big responsibility to pick up a franchise. You need to make every decision really carefully and be considerate. With Evil Dead, it was a similar thing. You’re trying to pick up a movie and still do your own thing. With Evil Dead, it’s interesting because there’s a lot of people who love the comedy of it and then there’s people who see it as a serious horror movie. Those two worlds are very different and you need to figure out how you trade those extremes. I just try to do what resonates with me and figure out where I want to go with it. There’s a lot to navigate and the real tough part of franchises is that the studios hold them dear to their heart and fans are very invested, too. So you’ve got to take it seriously. You try to have fun with it because it should be fun, but each decision is made carefully and collaboratively.
You absolutely feel that. You never know what you’re going to get when you’re this deep into a franchise, but what Jacob does here left me so impressed. The way that each scene is composed, like you said, could be done in a totally different way, but there’s so much thought that goes into all of it. It’s really evident.
NB: He’s a really detailed director. One thing I’ll say about Jacob is that he cares so much. Every prop is slaved over. It’s the type of thing that you’d hope that your director would do, but Jacob in particular. I had a lot of respect for the focus that he brought to set every day. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance. That’s really reassuring because I can’t be there all the time, but between Jacob and Dave Garbett, the DOP, you just know they’re going to shoot great imagery. They’re going to do what they can to make what you’re doing look as great as it can. It involves a lot of trust from all of us, but I think that’s kind of a cool part of the industry.
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing
There are some really disturbing recurring visuals that involve teeth in this movie. The hair in the tooth bit is particularly strong. How did you go about fleshing out these scares and making them as visceral as possible?
NB: We have these amazing effects people who are doing great work and the prop department does so much amazing work within our team. We have the people who specialize in hand props, so like the dentistry tools in that scene, that’s so detailed. Hand props are one department that probably doesn’t get enough credit in the industry, but there’s so much that they’re doing. You need to have all these detailed elements and you’re basically operating in this kind of clinical fashion. So our job is to make sure that we deliver on all those little details. We have actors who are dealing with sharp objects and interacting with prosthetics, and then there’s the dentist’s clinic as this backdrop.
We wanted to dress it as this fresh, clean backdrop so that it doesn’t initially feel like a horror moment. It’s not a horror setting, but it’s a horror sequence. Some of those decisions were really key. Everything is sort of carefully thought through in terms of what’s going to lead to a clinical environment where this awful thing happens. Everything looks good and ordinary, and then it switches. It’s a change that’s driven by the story, but then takes the audience along with it. It’s a regular trip to the dentist that suddenly turns into a horror sequence.
The pillow fort sequence is a standout moment from the film that’s also a franchise highlight. Can you talk about bringing that sequence to life and if it evolved at all during production.
NB: Yeah, it did. That’s one that I was thinking about today. When you read the script, the first job is to build this house—create a house for the characters, the backstory, the flashback to the ’90s, and all these things. They’re the big ticket items for us because they’re big builds, big expenses, and big amounts of studio space. But then you read the pillow fort sequence and it’s easy to just sort of flick over it the first time around, but then you go into detail of what needs to be done. It ended up being this huge set piece. In fact, I can’t remember how many meters of fabric it was that we had to order, but we knew it was going to be complicated. We put an art director on all that and we’re like, “You’re going to be with this from beginning to end.” We needed someone really focused on it and taking it from a cardboard mock-up to completion.
I’m walking through it with Jacob, going on this journey and figuring out how to do the in-camera trick. There’s a trick where we’re following Gemma through the fort and then the camera pans around and she discovers that she can’t get out anymore. That was all just done in-camera. We had a team of people moving parts and pushing the sofa away on slide rails and bringing in the rest of it. So it was this little choreographed move with the camera when we were shooting it. I remember being like ten takes in or something — I might be wrong there — and it just wasn’t working. It was a disaster… but then the next take was so seamless and it was really, really effective. It was very surreal if you actually went inside it because it had this sound baffling up, too. In fact, one of the camera operators realized that he just couldn’t be in there. He thought it was so claustrophobic and this bizarre feeling.
We always knew that it was going to be creepy and have this aesthetic that’s almost like a padded cell. It was all about creating this feeling of being trapped in a really boring space that just goes on and on and on. We shot in Melbourne and we took every bit of this fabric that they had in stock. We were like gathering this fabric from around the world. It was hundreds of meters of fabric. It’s another case where something very ordinary just turns into something so complicated. The things that seem so ordinary and simple become the biggest challenges for us. I love that sequence though. It’s one of the first things that we filmed, which got everyone working together. Just getting the camera into this thing required a lot of thinking. Like how do you move the camera through something that small? So we’re working out rigs with the cinematographer to light things up. It was very experimental and, in a way, horror is a genre that involves big set pieces like this that will occupy a huge amount of your time and resources while all these other things are also going on.
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing
This film has so many inventive set pieces and you really get to go for broke with the production design. Was the pillow fort sequence the biggest challenge that you faced or were there bigger hurdles?
NB: I think the pillow fort sequence was the biggest challenge on a technical level, but it was definitely one of the most entertaining aspects of production. I can always respect when somebody just sticks with something and sees it through. We had one art director who had this challenge, Adrian [Dalton], who was brilliant. He just stuck with it until we mastered it, as everyone was working on everything else. It was a big challenge. The other major challenge was in the tattoo parlor.
We did this kind of in-camera trick with a mirror where we kind of put a hole in the wall. We have a mirror, then we take the mirror out and repeat the set in the reflection. So it’s this fake kind of switch-out. There’s an in-camera trick there, as it goes to the illusion that the reflection is not accurate. Again, it’s a simple idea, but when you get into the fine detail of reversing everything and creating a mirror image of a set, it requires a lot of brainpower and focus. Credit goes to Jacob for persisting with them because I think there’s often a visual effects solution to these things that’s explored as the first way out. We persisted with it in-camera.
Audiences are savvy enough to detect that kind of thing. It really does make a difference when things are handled practically.
NB: I think it does. Even on the set it becomes an instance where it makes everyone focus. Nobody wants to be the department that messes up once everyone sets a challenge for themselves. I think some of the other challenges were that this is a movie that was made to be set in America, but not shot in America. I’m one of those people who is making things offshore and trying to sell the fact that we’re in America. Often there’s a lot of Americana — like furniture and vehicles — that just aren’t available to us. A lot of our resources go into making all this feel like we’re somewhere we’re not, which of course is what filmmaking has been since Hollywood started. It’s the illusion of being somewhere.
A lot of what we were doing involved finding a specific street that worked perfectly for us or a house that would be a natural fit. All that needed to look American, so you’re left with very specific things that you’re looking for. A big challenge was to first get the right location. It’s always nerve-wracking when you start a movie and you haven’t found your location yet and the clock is ticking. The first challenge is always location scouting. I think we found a great location. The street that we found had these beautiful trees — specimen trees — it was the only street in Melbourne that had those trees. We couldn’t have wished for something more graphic. They’re these veiny, cool, unique pieces of nature. Some of the best production elements just happen by chance. The big builds and sets are big challenges, but then quietly behind the scenes are the pillow forts, mirrors, dental scenes, and weird props. It’s fun. It’s great.
TheInsidiousfranchise continues to be a steady provider for Blumhouse. If another entry happens would you be interested in returning? Was there anything that you couldn’t pull off that you’d like to do in a sequel?
NB: There’s so many things that you can develop in this franchise. I think The Further is something that can go even further. I think there’s more to investigate. I think you want to see more of that. For me, it ultimately comes down to the director. If the director is really a great director who is excited about a project then it’s really hard for me to not come on board and be excited about it, too. So what would get me to do another Insidious movie would be if the director has a brilliant vision. Jacob had a great idea and we clicked straight away. I love his level of attention to detail and I think that’s one of things that we all respect within each other. If the director really appreciates the work that goes into everything then you know you’re off to a really good start. So the right director and the right idea are necessary. There’s a lot more to explore and what I love about Insidious is that it’s such a simple idea at the heart of it. It’s a gate. It’s a portal. There’s no end to what you can do with that. I love that. I think people in horror sometimes talk about jump-scares like they’re bad. Insidious is a jump-scare movie, but it’s fun! I think they’re great. I look forward to them.
![Rotting Teeth, Pillow Forts, & Demonic Acolytes: ‘Insidious: Out of the Further’s’ Production Designer On Conquering The Further [Interview]](https://www.dreadcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Insidious-Out-Of-The-Further-Retainer-Demon-Advances-1200x675.jpg)
