Inside (2007)
Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s Inside is a beautiful junk painting of your worst nightmares, probably the most potent exploitation of unyielding, inexplicable violation that I’ve seen since Takashi Miike’s Audition. Like Miike at his more unhinged (and Audition isn’t it) Bustillo and Maury announce their total lack of regard for all notions of good taste and restraint with their opening image: a severe car accident as seen and experienced by an unborn child. One moment the child is soothed by his mother’s loving (if still somewhat alarming) words, the next he’s jolted and throttled, blood rising and floating from the inside.
The pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) and her unborn child do manage to survive, but Sarah’s husband isn’t as fortunate. Sarah, her face plastered in distinctly French movie blood, looks over at her husband and wails. Four months later, it’s Christmas Eve and Sarah’s doctor informs her that she’s to give birth the following day and advises that she go home and relax in that cool, condescending manner with which doctors, or people who know you’ve recently lost someone, speak so fluently. Sarah’s employer and mother separately beg her to spend Christmas with them, but Sarah, confused, bitter, lonely, demurs and returns to her home to spend Christmas Eve alone. Sarah, inevitably of course, comes to regret that decision when a strange woman (Béatrice Dall, unforgettable), referred to simply in the credits as “la femme”, knocks on Sarah’s door in the black of the night and asks to be let in. Sarah, seeing only a dark shadow, and not as stupid as many in these types of pictures, tells the woman to scram, but this femme isn’t so easily dissuaded. Soon it’s unavoidably evident that the woman has come for Sarah’s child, and she doesn’t intend to leave without it.
Inside’s opening act is superb; a stylish, slow-burn emotional penetration that seemingly plays every one of your primal campfire fears against you: the inexplicable stranger, the dark, dank lonely night, the policemen who come and go to little avail, the dreams of your child revolting inside you. Sarah’s home is distinctly stylish; a movie place of dread; of unspoken, hellish domestic resentment, lit in such pale dusky yellows as to suggest a warm, humid womb itself. The title is, needless to say, multi-tiered in meaning. La femme wants to get inside, inside, inside, and nothing will stop her multiple invasions of Sarah’s taken for granted boundaries: her peace, her house, and ultimately her pregnant body. Bustillo and Maury exploit and extend Sarah’s sudden, burning revulsion and panic with masterful craftsmanship: la femme is equal parts specter (of guilt and bourgeoisie complacency and entitlement), butcher, psychotic and unstoppable culmination of every mother, or human’s worst nightmare. Bustillo and Maury, unlike virtually everyone else working the genre these days, aren’t afraid of being labeled tasteless or psychotic, they want to hammer your pressure points, and they don’t intend to play fair.
The film is surreally, shockingly, grandly, unbelievably, absurdly violent. Inside, because it’s horror and French, has been likened to Alexandre Aja’s High Tension, but that picture blew its load on gory pyrotechnics that had nothing to do with theme or atmosphere. That film was an unintentionally laughable, boring cartoon, with a twist ending that only further highlighted its pointlessness. Inside is, and this is the confusion of it, subjective and exploitive in equal measures. As accomplished as the picture is, it still exudes a problematic carny freak show “look at that!” vibe that borders on inhuman. The film is more original than many slasher pictures, but it’s still rooted in movies above all else. Rear Window? Check. Blood Simple? Check. Wait Until Dark? Check. Every gross horror movie ever made? Check. Woman finally saying fuck it and going all Ripley on us whether it makes sense or not? Check.
The male (probably young) filmmakers get these women, and portray their insecurity, rage, and psychosis with surprisingly fluid ease (until the end, where the Ripley factor kicks in, and we suffer the obligatory “someone’s dead, no they’re not” fake out) but the very male filmmakers also seem to be at a distance that might be inevitable with such a loaded, unavoidably female subject. These guys think this is gross, a woman would think it’s tragic (and gross). The references to the French riots of 2005 hint at a subtext of class resentment that the picture doesn’t seem too interested in capitalizing on, it’s a red herring, a sketch of the boogeyman’s origin that doesn’t really inform the film much one way or the other (though it does season the ultimate punch line). The body invasion of Inside lacks the self body-bewildering kick of an early Cronenberg film because the second and third acts are too indulgently disgusting: Bustillo and Maury don’t have enough faith in their final assault; they threaten to turn it into yet another exhibit in the Grand Guignol theatre of well lit cruelty.
Inside is still a notable, stunning piece of genre filmmaking. (There’s a brilliant, non-violent moment near the beginning where Sarah discovers, via just developed photographs, that la femme has known her for some time.) The violence, before it goes haywire, is ghastly and remarkably apt thematically. The tides of blood flow and spurt and explode, and hauntingly confirm and underline a terrified young woman’s mental implosions. The worst has finally arrived. The film treads uneasily towards High Tension farce near the end but reins it in for a devastating final image that threatens to sink into moral quicksand. Perversion and chaos have stolen life and motherhood and then just as strangely handed them right back, in a Grimm’s fairy tale finale that the filmmakers, in their audacity, seem to believe is a happy one. The ending reveals the filmmakers to possibly be more in touch with their inner woman than we initially assumed, though the horror lies in which woman they appear to be in touch with.
★★★½
April 25th, 2008 at 8:54 am
There is that dark, twisted part of me that wants to see this now, Chuck. It’s the same part of me that sought out Salo and Man Bites Dog, although that is something I would never admit in polite company. I stopped short of tracking down the Guinea Pig films, but at some point the violence and depravity on display blur the line so fully that it ceases to exist. One’s own twisted fascination with things can challenge one’s belief in humanity.
When No Country was making the theatrical rounds, people kept mentioning how violent it was. In truth, an episode of CSI is more gory and in-you-face than No Country, but the difference is that the Coens handled the violence realistically. As in, when people die, you’re very cognizant of the fact that people are dying, people with lives and hopes and futures and heartbeats. CSI and cheezy slasher flicks gloss it all over and numb you to what’s taking place. You don’t care about the dead body on the morgue slab because the show doesn’t care. You don’t care about the buxom blonde with the cleaver in her head because the movie doesn’t care.
What, then, is worse? Is there a kind of filmmaking that we can label reprehensible? Are the Friday the 13th films and the entire canon of Guignol exploitation reprehensible because they treat violence and death so lightly? Can that further be applied to meat-head action flicks like Die Hard, where we simply want the baddies to die in the most creative way imaginable?
Or is it worse to put real, nasty violence on the screen? Is Inside or No Country worse because they traffic in the genuine article? We watch these for entertainment, and our shock at what we see is part of what we sign up for. Sometimes we respond with humor, sometimes we respond with revulsion, but regardless we enjoy the fact that a response has been elicited.
Sorry, this is a bit of a ramble. I’m just wrestling with whether there should be a line drawn somewhere, on films themselves or on the choices we make on which films to watch. I realize this strays into book-burning territory, but at some point is it not imperative for us to say, “Enough!”?
What do filmmakers like Bustillo and Maury contribute to humanity? Do they detract from it? Do we detract from it by choosing to watch their films? Is there something to be said for placating that nasty little demon within all of us? Can we apply morality to our filmwatching? Or, can we only draw the line at genuine snuff films?
As I mentioned in the first paragraph, Chuck, I’m still tempted to see this and I’ve certainly given hours of my life to viewing the worst-of-the-worst cinematically, so don’t view this as an attack on your filmwatching habbits. Great review, as always, and I’m just using your piece to springboard down into the ramshackle rabbit hole of my brain.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:54 am
All valid points Evan, and if I was wider read I know I would receive mail jumping my case for recommending the film. My tack is this, I don’t know what the line is or where it should be drawn, so I report on the picture at hand as well as my response to it. I nearly put a warning in the review but I figured that would just dare or encourage people, and I didn’t want to do that. Many will hate INSIDE, and it is a VERY ugly and violent movie, but there’s craftsmanship too, and the film is playing with very primal ugly material that may justify some of the violence. I will say this to you and all reading: THIS IS NOT FOR VERY MANY PEOPLE.
But, truthfully, The Girl Next Door a few months ago bothered me significantly more and there’s little on screen violence. If the makers of INSIDE had dialed down the fanboy element they could have really hit on something. As such, its a tremendously unsettling, suspensful picture. Does Inside do anyone any good? I don’t know, though my guess is no, but I would say that about most movies either good or bad, probably. Thanks for your comment Evan.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I really want to see this, and I’ve tried to stay away from reading too much about it. That’s why I only read the first and last paragraphs of your review. They only furthered my excitement about this movie. But it’s still not available on DVD in the US, is it? I look forward to reading your full review once I see the movie.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:56 am
It is available in the U.S. I watched the unrated version via Netflix.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Wow, sometimes I feel really lazy and really stupid at the same time. This would be one of those times. Thanks for the heads up. It’s now on the top of my queue with a long wait. I’ll let you know what I think of it.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Don’t sweat it Justin, happens to the best of us. It’s only been out a week anyway.
April 27th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Hmmm. You’ve piqued my interest and make it sound watchable but my stomach is weak these days. Yet I can eat pizza while watching NIGHTMARE CITY…
April 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
These days ive become a major pussy when it comes to thrillers. Knowing id never actually watch this movie i went to youtube and checked out some clips including the final sequence.
So yeah. Now Im disturbed. Outside of this discussion thread who do i have to talk to??
Ok. Just tried to explain the movie to my buddy at work. Chuck my hats’ off to you for doing a great job explaining the film without sounding like a complete psycho. Because i just did a really crappy job.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:07 am
The “how do I discuss the movie without appearing to be someone who just gets off on this sort of thing?” concern is a valid one. I almost didn’t review it, but that would be chicken shit. Despite considerable violence, the picture is interesting and worth a little discussion.
Talking about it at work though is ballsy. My hats off to you Cat.