Inside (À l'intérieur) (2007)

Director: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury

Writer(s): Maury and Bustillo, from a scenario by Bustillo
Starring: Alysson Paradis, Jean-Baptiste Tabourin, Claude Lule, and Beatrice Dalle

Inside, like many French horror films, plays out like an anti-thesis of the Hollywood picture. Whereas Hollywood horror consists of dumbing down ideas to cater to increasingly dull audiences, the French are consistently finding new ways to push the envelope. It doesn't always work (Ils springs immediately to mind), but you have to respect them for trying new things, instead of pandering to target demographics.

Inside is the pique of the French Horror New Wave; it is an unrelenting work of pure terror, and one of the greatest horror movies of the last twenty years, if not all time. On the one hand, it's ridiculously, graphically violent (it originally got an NC-17 rating and deserves every bit of it), and on the other, it revels in making the audience uncomfortable with scenes of almost unbearable tension. Yet, unlike so many other films that revel in the red stuff, it's not just out to shock its audience—the underlying story, while simple, manages to squeeze in a couple tender moments, before it starts going off the rails.

Generally speaking, one thing I've noticed is that horror movies with simple stories tend to be the most effective; Inside only heightens that theory. Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is still reeling from the car accident that claimed her husband, Mathieu, but that left her and her unborn child relatively unharmed. Flash forward four months. She is less than 24 hours away from having her child, when a bizarre woman known only as “la femme” (“The Woman”, and brilliantly played by Beatrice Dalle) breaks into her home. She waits until Sarah is asleep, then enters her room, armed with scissors...

And this kickstarts an epic fight between a mother, and the woman that desperately wants her child. This is the entire premise, but co-writers/directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury wring every ounce of possible suspense from the set-up...just when you think they've painted themselves into a corner, they find another way to catch you completely by surprise (one moment was so shocking I yelped and jumped at the same time, an incredibly-rare occurrence, then had to turn around and pick my wife's jaw up off the floor). As for the violence, it's plentiful, but it's never meant to be fun: Characters convulse, gasp for air, and cry for their mommy's before dying, and stuff like this only adds to the nauseating atmosphere.

Perhaps most impressive about all of this whole package, at least for the most part, its believability. I mean, obviously this has to stretch creative licensing a little bit for it to work (no neighbors can hear the gunshots in the dead middle of night, yet a police officer sitting outside in a car can?; why do the police never call for backup?; why does Sarah throw away a perfectly good gun in favor of a sharp object?; etc.), but the characters are refreshingly smart overall. There aren't any moments of “let's split up”, and the one time we think “La femme” has all-too-easily fooled two cops, we learn it's just a ruse on their part to try to catch her off-guard. It's sad when having sensible characters feels like a breakthrough, but such is the state of the horror film.

A word of warning that I probably shouldn't even have to waste my breath on: It's probably a good idea NOT to watch this if you are pregnant. My wife and I had seen this before, and I had a hankering to watch it again (it had been a couple years). Since my wife was around seven months pregnant, I assumed she wouldn't want to see it, but she assured me she did—and then spent the whole movie burying her face in her phone, audibly groaning during the brilliant “in the womb” sequences, and declaring afterwards that she will never watch the movie again. And this is coming from someone who quite possibly might revel in onscreen blood and gore even more than I do.

Anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time probably knows by now that I like to seek out movies that are different; that rise above the “status-quo” to show me things that I have never seen before. Movies that push the envelope, and at least attempt to shock, or get some kind of emotional rise out of me. Inside is exactly the kind of movie I'm always searching for, a film that dares you to look at, and stomach, its unending cruelty, then simultaneously dares you to look away. It is not after box office tickets, nor is it catering to teenagers in an attempt to fill multiplexes; at the same time, it's not out merely to shock or disturb. It's what a horror movie should be: a taboo-breaking, discomforting wreck of a film. It's fearless, it's unnerving, but above all it's made incredibly-well and with an abundance of talent, both in front of, and behind the camera, and that is why it's one of the greatest horror films of the past two decades. And probably beyond.

RATING: 9.5/10 

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