Inside (2007)

Fails in pretty much every aspect of film making

Oh man, oh man, oh man, what to say about your typical run of the mill modern day horror film? Not much, as that's what they are, nothing worth noting or remembering. And Inside is just another one of those, like High Tension, where if the amount of gore a film possessed determined it's brilliance than Citizen Kane and The Godfather would have some harsh competition for greatest film of all time.

But copious amounts of gore do not make a film good, ever; this is the same boring garbage as the Saw films, some of you kiddies will be quick to disagree, but it's true, deal with it. There's sort of a story, but who cares, because there's tons of blood and stuff.

Inside contains not even the remotest semblance of merit in any regards; there is no suspense, no desire to care about Sarah (whom I'm assuming we're supposed to care about, unless the directors were just doing a poor job of being typically French film makers; here's some people, good or bad, doesn't matter, just watch.) The use of sharp noises is so redundant and expected that one can't help but let out a laugh at how stupid it is.

Stupid is a keyword when discussing this mess of a film; the story is so unoriginal that it would have taken quite a bit to make it at least seem fresh and interesting, but these boys couldn't even bother with that; hey, here's the same old Argento inspired, but not nearly close to the level of genius in his heyday, garbage.

It's not a horror thriller, because there are no thrills, and definitely no horror; it's a slasher, plain and simple; the lowest level of cinema in it's purest.

The acting is really terrible, and the editing in parts was like rejected footage from a Korn video.

Skip it and watch Audition instead. July 24, 2008

Gory Great!

I was totally unprepared when I began watching this masterpece of terror. I read several reviews and googled it and thought it might be ineresting since I'm a terror/horror addict. Wow, the movie hooked me in from the very beginning and by the final frame, I wanted a long, hot bath--to wash away the ocean of blood and guts unleashed during the 2 hour running time. The performances by the two main women was simply amazing. One of them is having a baby and the other one wants it. There begins a battle of wits and body. My only questions are minor: why did the victim call the police and they came by to check on an intruder and then left. Why didn't she just move into a hotel for the night. Instead, she goes back to sleep, knowing there's a human monster hiding out somewhere near. Towards the end, when the cops are blown away and the backup comes in, he spends precioius minutes--surrounded by dead bodies--as he tries to get the power back on. Why didn't he race out to his car and call for backup? These questions are minor however since the French cast and crew keep us riveted to the electrifying actions of our two female performers. This movie is definitely not for kiddies or those easily sickened by bloody violence. This is one great movie! July 24, 2008

Getting Inside the Violence

I saw this film because it's been recommended on various web sites. Here in the UK, the film has not been released in any form so far, which is a great shame.
This film totally rocks - it has violence and gore to the limit and a suspenseful, well thought-out storyline. I was very pleasantly surprised because being a bit of a gorehound (New York Ripper, Cannibal Holocaust, Aftermath etc.), most films that are meant to be 'disturbing' or 'gory' are neither - take Cabin Fever for instance, so much hype and yet the film was a big let-down. Not so with this French flick - it delivers, and then some. It's well made, very well acted and the violence is just the right tempo for the mood of the piece. Who ever thought that a pair of scissors could do so much damage?

If you're a gorehound or a horror fan, check this out - though make sure you get the unrated version, far more fun. July 16, 2008

NOT SO SCARY!!!!

I Watched this movie just last night
and I Don't get what the all the fuss about
sure this film's got lot's>>and Lot's
Bloody Scenes after a another but
it's Not That Scary at all!!!
I Think too much blood used in this film
makes people Uneasy.
I gave three star's Because
this is the first french horror film
I ever watched.and for is that concern.it's pretty good makeing
it's NOT so Scary but pretty good!!! July 15, 2008

"Ain't 'cha even dead yet?!"

Inside A I'nterieur, is a ghastly modern French horror film of the slasher suspense genre. In the more standard films of this kind, there is generally a slow build up as to what the villain might be capable of doing. First, there is the warning signs of their "off" behavior. Fallowed by the destruction of inanimate objects, and possibly the murder of Fluffy, the house pet. It is only after a good hour of screen time, when this arch of drama plays out, that we as film patrons get the reward we have been waiting for in this type of story telling. That is when the villain carries out their mission with singleness of purpose, and inflicts harm to actual living breathing human beings before they themselves meet with the iron clad hand of justice. In many ways, Inside still adheres to some of the basic formula to this type of suspense driven story telling. Only in this case, Inside is more like Single White Female on acid. Inside is the very definition of sadistic cinema, so anyone who can't stand the heat better get out of the fire ASAP.

Double your trouble with double mint dreams.

Sarah, played by Alysson Paradis A.K.A., the aunt of Johnny Depp's kids, is a woman who lost her husband in a very bloody car wreck, which she herself survived. Now fully pregnant and waiting out her final days before she goes into labor with her dearly departed husbands baby, she has two very unpleasant dreams back to back. The first starts off like it was lifted from the film Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. While rubbing her distended swollen belly in depressed boredom, her dead husband comes up behind her and joins in on all the caressing, which lovingly leads to a bit of necking. This is fallowed by the sudden jolting image of her husbands head smashing into the windshield, causing Sarah to snap out of her delusion. A moment later Sarah nods off on the couch, only to awake in a coughing frenzy. Suddenly she falls onto all fours and begins vomiting up huge sprays of milk. Then in her agony and turmoil, she manages to fall onto her back and barf up her unborn baby right out of her mouth. She snaps awake this time to the sound of someone knocking on her door. It is at this point in the film that anyone with any common sense in them will have a good understanding of the level of gore and carnage they are bound to witness if they continue to watch this film. In that way, these dreams are pretty much saying " You've been warned!"

"Will the real Beatrice Dalle please stand up!"

The knock on the door comes at roughly the 20 minute point in the film, and it is none other then the sadistic villain of the film known simply as La Femme. La Femme is played by Beatrice Dalle, an actress who once beat up a meter maid in Paris for daring to ticket her parked car. Beatrice Dalle plays a woman who is, in many ways, beyond mortality. In that she is beyond reason and normal human emotions. Added to this, her whole presence is nothing short of monk like. Cloaked in what seems to be a black bell sleeved ninja robe, she stands and moves with a decisive rigid posture, that is far too severe and driven to be in any way normal. Once in Sarah's house, she fishes for the proper implement to carry out her acts of carnage with the surgical precision of her black gloved hands. While up close, she does nothing to alleviate ones distress of her otherworldy presence, in that her very face is enough to give one a lifetime suply of the "hebe jebe's". La Femme has a twisted cruel mouth with big fleshy red lips, containing oversized serrated teeth, that are marked by a huge gap between the front two. She also has an abnormally tall forhead, that peaks out of her parted sleek black hair like a marble shard. She has a near cro-magnon brow which itself drops steeply into deep eye sockets containing steely hard dark eyes. Had this sinister creation been the work of make up artist, it would of been an act of pure brilliance for that department, but as it turns out, This is nothing more then Beatrice Dalle's actual real face. Hell, she is so hideously scary to look at, that I think I might of fallen in love with her. But seriously, if it wasn't for her performance and ultimately her presence in the film, it would not have stood out like it did. No amount of bleak atmosphere or gore, could ever supply the amount of hard edginess that Beatrice Dalle brought to this film. Making the film makers lesson here an obvios one. If you want to make a film that is driven by the brutal acts of carnage of a sadistic mastermind psychotic, then before you do anything else, get yourself a sadistic mastermind psychotic that will make the audience members gnaw their fingers right off.

Sharon Tate is a whimp compaired to Alysson Paradis's Sarah!

To speak plainly, never in the history of cinema has a pregnant character had to suffer so much abuse without surcoming to the laws of death. Fallowing is a list of most of the injuries inflicted on poor Sarah during her brief encounter with Beatrice Dalle...I left out one particular infliction while shuffling the order of the others, in order to avoid spoiling the film.
1) Cuts up her hands using a knife shaped shard of mirror as a weapon and digging tool.
2) Is pulled so savagely by her hair that a sizable handful is yanked out.
3) Gets bashed in the face and head with a toaster that was swung by its cord.
4) Has her water brake on her inducing labor in her attempt to escape from Beatrice Dalle.
5) Gets slashed across both lips by the cutting edge of a pair of scissors leaving a five inch long tear across her face.
6) Cold cocked in the face so hard and unexpectedly that she is slammed into the floor.
7) Has a good one inch of meat above her belly button cut open with the same pair of scissors that were used to slice her face.
8) Is drug across a room by her hair, hit in the face twice and tossed roughly to the floor of the kitchen.
9) Has her face bruitally stomped on twice while already laying on the ground.
10) Has the afor mentioned pair of scissors impaled through her left hand, sticking it to the wall like a beetle in someones bug collection.
11) Is beaten so hard in her pregnant belly by a police baton wielding lobotomized and deranged cop that her birth fluids spill out all over the floor, causing her to slip in the puddle and go flying neck first against the kitchen cabinets.
...And now for my personal favorite...
12) Ruptures her own throat with a knitting needle in an attempt to kill herself, but decides that she wants to live so she duct tapes the bleeding geyser that was her neck on the fly.

I could go into all the emotional torment that Sarah suffers in her one hour of screen time with Beatrice Dalle, especially since Sarah's every rescuer gets grotesquely destroyed by this sadist. From accidentally stabbing her own mother in the throat, to having a cops head get blown off in her face in a shower of splatter, Sarah suffers as much mental distress as she does physical injury. The point here is, that all this brutality goes too far. What gets compromised by all the blood shed is the believability that this could actually really happen. I am not stupid, I do understand that this film is catering itself sylistically, into an endless progression of outdoing its last shock, but such devices come with inherent flaws attached. Had this film not made me utter sentences in disbeliefe like "Good God woman! Ain't 'cha even dead yet?!"
I wouldn't be here stressing the importance of of doing all you can to not make someone have to suspend their beliefe. Because I am now Beatrice Dalle's newest number one fan after this fair, I would of given this film five stars in a heart beat had it just remained believable all the way through. This to me is the overall flaw of this movie, sadly it came darn close, but just wasn't quite a cigar.
Nonetheless, it is still a solid bit of sadistic horror entertainment that I can recomment in good conscious to anyone with a soft spot for the sick and unusual. Four stars. July 14, 2008

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