Product Description: Four months after pregnant Sara loses her husband in a horrific auto accident, she is visited on Christmas Eve by a mysterious madwoman. Alone and desperate to save her unborn child, Sara fights to stay alive as each of her potential rescuers die at the womans sadistic hands.
Amazon.com: Hailed by several critics as the first great French horror film this millennium, Inside opens on a gory note and stays true to the bloodfest throughout. But rather than using splatter-gore for comedic effect, as did young directing team Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's predecessor, Hershell Gordon-Lewis, this duo timed their gore to build tragic suspense, scene after disgusting scene. The strength of Inside's plot is its simplicity, though the film is slow at first. Pregnant photojournalist, Sarah Scaragato (Alysson Paradis), has just lost her husband in a fatal car accident and is in recovery when her baby is due on Christmas Eve, in fact. Morose, she rejects friend and family visits, opting to stay home. A bewitched predator, played by Beatrice Dalle, senses Sarah's vulnerability and seizes upon it like a spider capturing prey in its web. The tale, woven around maternal psychosis, reveals Dalle's haunting preoccupation with stealing Scaragato's unborn baby. Each character who enters Sarah's house, the "war zone" as one doomed policeman puts it, encounters the wrath of two women fighting with mirror shards, knitting needles, scissors, hurled kitchen appliances, and even a homemade bayonette. Like the best horror thrillers about motherhood---Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, Alien---Inside seizes ample symbolic opportunities to exhibit the primal obsession women have with babies. Even better, Inside invites feminist critique as do other female-centric horror films such as Ginger Snaps, whose plots not only include strong, vengeful female victims, but also sympathetic, criminal femme fatales. An entertaining "Making of Inside" featurette follows, revealing makeup and special effects techniques. Inside is for a specific audience; as scenes get redder and wetter, the squeamish may find it sickening---beware and enjoy. —Trinie Dalton
Gore galore Inside doesn't disappoint with its gory nature, its violent and extreme portrayal of human turmoil or with its picturesque evilness. The movie is suspenseful and mysterious eough with its dark set, unique camera angles and talented actors. Where Inside fails short of 4 stars is in its premise.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
The movie begins with a car crash where a pregnant young wife accidentally kills her husband and supposedly the passengers in the other vehicle. As the movie progresses, we see the mother-to-be four months later at her ninth month of pregnancy and in deep turmoil. She had lost her husband and by the looks of it she is not very excited about the upcoming birth.
Enter the mysterious woman. On Christmas night (happens to be that same night), while at her house, alone and far away the rest of the world, the young mother is visited and psychologically tormented by a strange woman. And as the mother's fear grows the visitor's violence increases and she ends up braking into the house. To this point, viewers are wondering whether the mother is imaging this woman, or whether there is something seriously wrong with this new character's psyche. And later we find out it's the latter.
As the night progresses so does the depth of violence and gore. While the woman chases the mother, cutting into her with a pair of nasty looking scissors, first the mother's colleague and then her own mother (both somehow end up showing at her house) become victims of the psychotic woman (and in a very gruesome way). Then four more people end up dead (three policemen and one seriously unlucky felon).
The movie ends with the particularly brutal c-section performed by the mad woman and the subsequent death of the mother.
Inside falls short in conveying both the love and obsession of the mad woman (violence doesn't cut it in my book) as we are left to wonder to the very end whether the loss of her own child lead her to a psychological breakdown, or whether she was mad to begin with. Furthermore, the mother fails in establishing a strong character as one is left with confused thoughts about her not wanting the baby in the first place (on one occasion she even held a knife to her womb to prevent the mad woman from killing her) and her depression of being the only survivor of the car crash.
There are a lot of lose ends in the movie that make it a tad incomplete.
Movies in similar fashion:
) Martyrs (much better in my opinion) ) Frontier ) Funny Games
fantastic grassroots horror..by the french?!?!? This is one of the best horror (or any other film for that matter) that I have ever seen. The story is very tightly crafted and engaging the whole way through. I have read some of the comments and questions related to this film; and let me say that there are no zombies or vampires in this movie so don't believe everything you've read. I have recommended this film to everyone I can and have gotten no negative feedback yet. Hell, even the making of doc on the disc is fantastic. It really gives hope to all of us that make horror movies on very low budgets. Now that is not to say it is of low quality; it's just amazing how they got it to look so good using good old fashioned old school horror tech. No CG blood here; just one instance of fire that was the only weird looking part to me, but I was so into it I can't even really complain about it. Fake blood through a hose and pump still work to this day if done with care, as is evident here. To comment on the lighting in the film; some have complained it is too dark at times. Watch the making of and they explain this and I think it will stifle most complaints. They could have put out the making of as it's own disc; it's that good. Just goes to show foreign horror is some of the best, although this was the first French one I'd watched but was glad. Oh yeah, it is subtitled. To close; this film was recommended to me by a editor for Fangoria magazine whom I'd met at a Type o Negative concert, so I'd like to this would add credibility to this review. Go buy the movie!!!!!!
over the top gore yet realistic I would say this movie is one of the most violent movies of the 2000's 2nd to murder set pieces director's cut. overall i would rate this film 5 stars just on sheer brutality alone!!! i would give this french classic 4 stars.It has a solid storyline very good acting and a load of gore .For a hardcore horror fanatic this is exactly the film you have been waiting for!
Terrible, unimaginative slasher boredom This is a truly pathetic excuse for a horror film. It's features innumerable scenes of staring into nothingness and sulking, not to mention the more (abeit) memorable scenes of crawling on the floor screaming. It's poorly acted, poorly concieved (pun intended), hideously paced, and remains nothing but a buildup to an orgasm of gore.
What is a good horror film, you may ask? A GOOD horror film suprises us. It's always pushing our expectations and relies on clever pacing and acting. "Alien" is a slow movie, but it's great because we really have no idea what will happen next - each reveal is movement in the plot. Does "Inside" have a plot? It's just a woman trying uselessly to fend off some stupid bogeyman.
"The Thing" used gore as a selling point, but it used it well. The setting was unique, the characters believable, and the violence seemed to come out of nowhere. What good is there when there's only two characters, one irritatingly useless and the other a mute straw-man of evil?
Before you slap the "AWESOME GOREY LOL!!!!111" label on this thing, please check out some far superior members of the genre. You'll be happy you did.
Mission Accomplished... INSIDE is the perfect movie for heartless psychopaths to see with their unsuspecting, pregnant girlfriends! Yes, this movie is all about the truly unthinkable actions taken by an insanely obsessed female of our species. The woman (Beatrice Dalle) is driven, determined, and absolutely relentless in her pursuit. Our impregnated heroine, Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is still devastated by the death of her husband 4 months earlier. She must snap out of her personal depression and go into full survival mode if she plans on protecting what is left of her family. INSIDE makes use of recent, all-to-real news stories about similar atrocities performed on the most vulnerable (I have read or heard of 2 such events). Imagine being a pregnant woman in her ninth month. Now, imagine some nut showing up at your home to take your baby. What would you do? INSIDE is a horror / thriller without limits. Do not expect a hollywood resolution! In the end, this story is about loss and two very different aspects of motherhood. Maternal drive, vengeance, and the will to protect / survive all combine for one nightmare of a tale! Highly recommended, but certainly not for everyone...
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
