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The concept behind ‘Inside’ is something that would make any acclaimed filmmaker foam at the mouth. Unfortunately, the director of this movie, Vasilis Katsoupis, is not one of them. The unfortunate outcome is a movie that feels incomplete while viewing and will leave people craving for a more detailed storyline, much like the starving main character in the film who had to sit through 105 minutes of utter neglect to enjoy.
Willem Dafoe plays the protagonist of this movie, ‘Nemo’, who happens to be an art thief. At the beginning of the movie, we see him being taken to a gigantic penthouse in New York City by a few individuals who remain unidentified. After disabling the security alarm, Nemo goes on to grab each and every ‘Egon Schiele’ painting he can find and just as he is about to leave, the security system goes haywire and locks him in. Nemo receives a notification from the handler saying that he is on his own before disappearing. After attempting to break the window and cut through the flashy front door, Nemo comes to the realization that he is trapped.
Even though that is terrible, he soon finds out that things are going to get much worse. There are priceless works of art in the apartment and various objects like relics, but one looks around and notices that there is almost nothing that denotes the presence of people. There is a refrigerator, almost empty of contents with only a few artefacts scattered in, but whenever it is opened, Macarena pipes from somewhere. And the plumbing is switched off. The only available water resources are a swimming pool, an automatic watering system for the indoor garden, and large fish tanks that contain you-know-what. It does not end there. The control system is fritzing, and due to the random temperature setting it can shift between boiling and freezing.
Nemo comprehends that he has a long way to go. However, this does not deter him from wanting to escape, most importantly through an elaborate DIY tower made from the apartment’s furniture that he hopes will give him enough height to reach the skylight. While these efforts are exhausting and at times painful, he amuses himself to distract from the ache of solitude which has begun to feel like an endless loop of days and weeks. In addition, he makes use of the CCTV cameras in the apartment to create absurd tales about other people in the building and even stages discourse cooking shows where he makes pasta without a stove. The effect is similar to what Matt Damon had to endure while filming ‘The Martian,’ but in this case, the setting is lavish enough to justify funding a significant portion of a Mars mission.
Returning to my earlier point regarding the other filmmakers who can potentially take Katsoupis and the screenwriter Ben Hopkins’s set-up and make something impressive out of it. While watching “Inside” and realizing its inadequacy, I thought of three very different directors who would have been tremendously successful in making a film out of this material. For instance, I can picture Jerry Lewis turning it into a piece of continuously brilliant solo vaudeville during which the place is utterly destroyed as he attempts to break free. Even if you doubt this, take a look at his astonishing opus, “Cracking Up.” At the commencement of this movie, Jerry inadvertently destroys the waiting room of his psychiatrist through klutzy moves, patterned floors, and a bag of M&Ms. From the other perspective, the attempt to attend to the acclaimed Michael Haneke puts him in the saddle and at the reins of an existential arthouse (no pun intended) horror movie of sorts and more what would happen should he be inexplicably engaged to direct the third “Escape Room” film.
I would have truly enjoyed the idea of this concept in the hands of the brilliant yet late Larry Cohen who was known for his audacious premises on films like this and would have taken care of the transition into the sociological commentary regarding the literal and metaphorical value of art with grace.
Your mileage may vary with regard to the filmmakers I have mentioned, but whatever you might say about them, they all bring something to the table that makes them interesting and unique. On the other hand, Katsoupis does not seem to have something interesting to say about the subtext of his basic narrative, which revolves around the values that people place on art. Hence, ‘Inside’ which was his debut film becomes just another exercise in cruelty while watching Nemo’s self-destructive tendencies. While some moments appear to be darkly humorous, they don’t amount to much more than what was promised in the concept. I think a lot of people are going to be left seriously underwhelmed by how the film concludes. I must say though, his finish is meant to be slightly symbolic which I would like to tease Rubein Ostlund because he claims he would find it too on the nose.
Curiously, the most remarkable element in ‘Inside’ is also one of the most disturbing, and that is the acting. Don’t get me wrong; in a role that puts him in a Jacob’s position, where he controls every aspect of the drama, he is supremely gritty as he tries scaling Nemo’s emotional ladder coming from despair to resignation, and finally, some attempt of reconciliation with the world around him, at the intensity of a rollercoaster. This is done with wild abandon which we have come to expect from Dafoe, and as a result, his loses himself to brutality is not as riveting as it could be. Instead, it may have been more beneficial to cast someone who is more well-known for being easy-going and has more of a challenge as he meets parts of the movie where he has to lose himself. Lawrence Kasdan should, for example, have put George Clooney to play the part of Nemo, but make it another one of those smooth temple romps like, ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ and then have him resort to licking the inside of an empty freezer for sustenance.
“Inside’ appears like it is done with a reasonable amount of skill and craftsmanship (the apartment is a marvel of production design), only to realize that they are servicing a story that is nowhere as deep or bold as it imagines itself to be. The film has its moments and Dafoe definitely puts his heart into it, however, there is an emptiness that ultimately makes the entire affair rather the cinematic counterpart to art that decorates the wall just because it matches the sofa.
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