Inside

Inside (“À L’intérieur”)

France. 2007.

In French.

Directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo

Starring Allyson Paradis and Béatrice Dalle

Ahh, la France. Home of such stunning art as the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, and, in the past ten years or so, a series of shockingly gory horror movies. Part of a 21^st century trend of extreme French horror films, “Inside” and its kin (check for more posts soon) make the American-made “Saw” look more like “Butterknife.”

The film follows a very pregnant Sarah (Paradis), who, after surviving a car crash which killed her husband scant months before, heads home from her job as a photographer to prepare for the scheduled delivery of her baby the next day. Instead of a quiet Christmas Eve alone, she is attacked in her house by an insane woman (Dall) bent on trying to cut her open with a pair of shears and steal her baby.

The bulk of the movie is a brutal game of cat-and-mouse between the Woman, Sarah, and various visitors to Sarah’s house (her boss, her mother, and several police officers). The torture on display is graphic, relentless, and intense, winning this a 5/5 on the gore-o-meter (“I just vommed into my popcorn”).We see someone’s hand stabbed through and pinned to the wall with the shears, another person is stabbed through the neck with a hair quill and bleeds to death, someone’s face is burned off by a makeshift flamethrower, and so on. This is certainly not a movie for the faint of heart or stomach, dear Scarers! In terms of scariness (i.e. atmosphere, pacing, concept), I give it a 4/5 “Holy cannoli, that’s scary!”

Now let’s talk genre. “Inside” draws many parallels to the mother of all pregnancy scare movies, 1968’s “Rosemary’s Baby.” We have a weird interaction with a nurse at the hospital, a Christmas birth (perhaps unlike Rosemary’s antichrist baby, Sarah’s is the only good thing going for her), shears…Oh wait, no shears in “Rosemary’s Baby.” In any case, if “Rosemary” walks the viewer through the psychological terrorism of a pregnant woman, “Inside” is an exploration into a physical kind of terror. The final scene of the film is also reminiscent of “Rosemary,” with the quietness of the tableau shown offset by the horrible knowledge of its context.

As for the Hollywood circuit, talks have already been underway for Jaume Balagueró, director of Spain’s “*REC,” to direct a remake. We shall see (or as the French would say, “on verra”)! Knowing Hollywood, here are some expected changes:

1.   More guns

2.   Sex scene (showing no nudity)

3.   Woman becomes some kind of Sigourney Weaver bad-ass type

4.   Movie has 40x the budget and does nothing to really show for it (“Inside” was made for just 1.7m euros!)

Or is that just being unfair to Hollywood? That’s ok, too, I guess.

Peace out, Scarers. More movies just over the horizon!

AC