It’s official: France is the new horror cinema heavyweight on the world stage. Over the past few years, our beret-wearing friends have given us films like Haute Tension, Sheitan, Them, Calvaire, and Frontier(s)-each a genre offering that was better than anything else on the market. Their politically themed and extremely violent genre films are a throwback to a different era (e.g. the 1970s, when horror cinema was truly daring) and it’s safe to say that the reign of the pissed off Asian girl ghost is finally over. I’m not sure what’s in the French water-but I hope the filmmakers keep drinking it as this recent spate of Gallic horror flicks has been nothing short of amazing. And just when I thought it couldn’t get much better, along comes Inside-the film that finally supplants Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension as the king of the hill when it comes to French frights.
The film’s premise is simple: Sarah (Alysson Paradis), a young photographer is very pregnant. Unfortunately, four months earlier, she was in a very bad car accident-one that left her husband dead. Now, it’s Christmas Eve and she’s slated to deliver her baby the next day. Still depressed at the loss of her love, she spends the evening home, alone-at least for awhile anyway. Things become much more intriguing once La Femme (Beatrice Dalle) arrives on the scene. La Femme is a complete psychopath, desperate to claim Sarah’s unborn child for herself-through any (and I do mean any) means necessary. What ensues reminded of a number of films, most notably Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 2LDK (wherein two women in one apartment engage in a heated battle to the death) only with much higher stakes and an off-the-charts gore quotient.
The beauty of Inside is the way it manages to balance genuine suspense and stomach-churning carnage. The film’s early sequences are reminiscent of Halloween. La Femme is something like a female Michael Myers, stalking her prey from the shadows outside the house, keeping her face always shrouded in darkness. We’ve no idea who this woman is (or even what she wants, at first). All we know is that she’s targeted this very pregnant young woman. There are three things you can put in danger in a film if you want to evoke a reaction from an audience: a dog, a child, or a pregnant woman. Bustillo and Maury understand this and use Sarah’s character to ratchet up the tension early on. They use this to even more brutal effect as the film progresses, upping the gore and danger levels almost exponentially in each scene. By the time the end rolls around (with its ultimate revelation and absolutely chilling final shot), viewers will feel exhausted, upset, more than a little horrified, and probably impressed (if you’re into the sorts of films).
First time directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury deserve a ton of credit for why this film works so well. Aside from the opening sequences, the entirety of the film takes place inside Sarah’s home-and a large part of that time is spent with Sarah trapped inside her bathroom trying to keep La Femme at bay while also trying not to go into labor. The claustrophobic setting only serves to heighten the film’s tension. Sarah’s trapped-cornered in a room where she can’t call for help, can’t escape to the outside world, and can’t even keep tabs on what her adversary is doing. Bustillo and Maury play with this setting in a number of unique ways, using it as both an advantage and disadvantage for each character (but particularly Sarah) at numerous points throughout the narrative (and I’ll not spoil them here-you’ll know these moments when you see them, though).
The film’s cinematography and lighting is also excellent. The directors manage to capture La Femme in such a way that there are times where she looks like a normal woman (with some serious issues, of course) and others were she looks almost like a demon or a man. The lighting is fantastic in the latter stages of the film-once La Femme cuts the circuit breaker off, the house becomes dark, save for odd shafts of light here and there. The way Beatrice Dalle moves through the sets and the lighting once again reminds me of Michael Myers-Myers had what horror fans would come to call “the fade” in the first film. This was where Myers would glide into or out of frame from a dark shadowy place-usually right behind a character. I’ve never seen another film that managed to do this quite as well as Carpenter’s masterwork, but Inside does a good job at creating a similar visual dynamic.
If Hollywood ever becomes interested in remaking these French horror films (in the same way they’ve raped and pillaged their way through the Asian film community), I’ve no doubt that Inside will look very different. This film is brutally gory and there were moments that made even me (about as hardcore a gorehound as you’re ever likely to meet) flinch and squirm. Some of the things Sarah endures are just devastating-and the things that various folks who wander into the house during the tale have happen to them are no less graphic. The film boasts an amazing amount of carnage, including but not limited to crotch stabbings, scissor lobotomies, shots to the head, hand impalements, homemade blow torching to the face (right up there with a similar sequence in Fulci’s Contraband), stabbings to the jugular (complete with a geyser-esque blood spurting effect that brings to mind the hatchet-to-hand sequence in Argento’s Tenebre), and more. The final sequences are just insane-I’m not even going to tell you about them because I’d rather you have the thrill of experiencing them for yourself without knowing what to expect. To say that this film delivers on the gore scorecard is an understatement. If I had to describe it in one word, the only word that fits would be brutal. The atrocities committed in this film would never make it into a Hollywood remake.
Finally, I’ve got to give kudos to the two leading ladies, Alysson Paradis and Beatrice Dalle. Both women are absolutely amazing in their roles. Paradis’ Sarah is believable as a pregnant woman trapped in her home willing to do anything to survive and protect her unborn child. Dalle, on the other side of the coin, is absolutely terrifying as La Femme, instantly catapulting herself into the pantheon of all-time great horror villains. She’s creepy and utterly convincing in her role. With lesser actors taking either of these parts, Inside would have been a good film that could have achieved greatness-instead, it’s a great film that is now the gold standard that all other French horror films will have to aspire to.
Needless to say, if all this gushing doesn’t convince you to go out and get this film, then you can’t really be all that interested in horror cinema. In a world filled with lame PG-13 date movies and derivative remakes of films that didn’t deserve them in the first place, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have given us a gift-a horror film that’s actually horrifying. Inside never pulls a punch, going for the jugular from beginning to end. Some will find the subject matter and the presentation too gruesome to actually “enjoy” a film like this, but I’ve little doubt that anyone who sees it will come away from it and not respect what these filmmakers have accomplished.
Horror Geek Rating: 5 out of 5
Even now, two days after initially viewing Adam Mason and Simon Boyes’ film, Broken, I’m not really sure what to think of it. I have at least come to the conclusion that while it was certainly well made from a technical standpoint, I didn’t really like it.
