Dalton goes off to college, and that’s when the trouble begins. He’s an art student, and one day in class, his no-nonsense teacher (Hiam Abbass) instructs the students to go “further and further” into themselves. Apparently just saying the word “further” is enough to start unlocking memories for Dalton, which begs the question: had he not heard that word in any form in nearly 10 years? No matter. What matters is Dalton rediscovers his astral projection skills — and also starts seeing some unpleasant ghosts.
Meanwhile, Josh is being tormented as well. Father and son are connected by their repressed memories, so it makes a certain amount of sense that they’d lose that repression together. And now the stage is set for more spooky shenanigans! And also a father/son reconciliation! Will the Lamberts journey back into The Further? Will the dead psychic Elise (Lin Shaye) pop up in some form to offer advice? Will there be plenty of callbacks to the previous movies? Well … what do you think?
Wilson makes his directorial debut here, and he acquits himself nicely, especially in creating scenes that have a way of crawling under your skin. While there are jumpscares (one particularly effective jumpscare involves copious amounts of vomit) the actor/filmmaker is more interested in slowly building tension and dread, and he does so with several long, silent takes that build, and build, and build. They work exceedingly well at creating the appropriate creepy atmosphere — there’s a scene with Josh inside an MRI machine that’s probably one of the scariest things this series has ever done.