Director -
Alexandre Bustillo
Writers - Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
Production Company - La Fabrique de Films, BR Films, Canal+
IMDB Page
Writers - Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo
Production Company - La Fabrique de Films, BR Films, Canal+
IMDB Page
Inside is a movie written and directed by Alexandre
Bustillo. Before watching this movie and
after lots of reading many people seem to lump this movie in with Frontiers,
HighTension, and Martyrs. I loved all of
those movies but this one just does not fit that mold for me.
Sarah played by Alysson Paradis is a recent victim in a car
crash that takes her partners life, she’s left alone and pregnant. Sarah has pulled away from life some, she’s
jaded, she’s sad, she’s angry – despite her great catastrophe I did not feel
much for her. Her character was
pretty unlikeable.
Sarah is preparing for the arrival of her fatherless child
in a mere 24 hours when she is targeted in her home by La Femme,
played by Beatrice Dalle. La Famme is
after one thing and that’s Sarah’s unborn baby..although if she would have
just waiting 48 hours she might have had an easier time simply kidnapping said
baby – but anyways, there’s much more to these twos relationship that you find
out during the course of the movie.
What follows is a string of events that can only be called “how
the hell can characters make such poor decisions and how on earth can this tiny
woman beat the living crap out of anyone and everyone in this movie”. To me the answer was just to show gory
footage – which looked great by the way!
But I simply can’t accept such horrific beauty with such idiotic
characters making the worst decisions of their lives.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times there was a chance
for a character to escape, frankly there’s too many to count. Screaming often gets on my damn nerves during
a horror flick, but Sarah can only mutter some cries – she lives in a damn
neighborhood, screams might get attention lady.
The Police in this movie are complete morons. Their personal
decisions on dealing with the situation are laughable in a very bad way.
Now there are good things about this movie. The cinematography is gorgeous – which is why
I hate that I was so disappointed in the overall story. The blood is campy and fabulous, the lighting
is just perfect allowing you to see everything in its full glory, and the basic
concept/plot is great and easy to work with…or so I thought.
Inside fails in the details of its characters and script for
me, for a movie to be so pleasing to the eyes and with its overall atmosphere
it really has to deliver a fast paced well written dialog. The writing could not live up to the overall
look and feel of the film.
For the overall look I can't possibly rate this lower than a 5, but the script overall is just terrible.
I generally don't listen to commentaries, so I have no reason to think the following save for my own gut feeling: the viewer is supposed to be rooting for La Femme here.
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps it's no accident that Sarah - who ought to seem completely sympathetic being a widowed mother and all - comes off as being such a cold, mopey pill. The initial scenario, based upon what we've all learned to infer based upon the structure of the narrative, would lead one to believe that Sarah is the protagonist with whom we should sympathize. Then every single thing she does and says begins to pile up until you just really couldn't care less about her.
Then La Femme shows up, and she's so crazily committed to getting that baby for herself that the viewer actually begins to kind of root for her. Every single peripheral character makes one bad choice after another, further reinforcing the notion that maybe La Femme should succeed, because she's the only person in the movie that isn't an idiot.
Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but that last shot of La Femme sitting in the dark calmly rocking the baby just seems right. She may be batshit crazy, but she's committed to that baby. Sarah seemed to just view the prospect of single parenthood as a nuisance, and she was far too caught up in her own drama to have properly cared for the baby when it arrived anyway.
If you ever watch Inside again, go into it viewing everything with the idea that La Femme is the character with whom you should sympathize. It's an entirely different movie.
I totally see what you're saying. I too didn't feel much for Sarah, I agree with you about her not being the most likeable and she definitely didn't seem into the baby - definitely disconnected. I think my main issues with the movie were just characters choices, but now that you've given me reason to perhaps rewatch it (thinking of LaFemme being the only character capable carrying out the task of caring for the baby or surviving life in general :)) it could possibly help me to like it more. I also went into this with crazy hyped expectations, that can also cause issues when you finally see a movie too. Thanks so much for your response~
ReplyDelete