Nemo (Willem Dafoe) is stuck. The protagonist of the thriller Inside, Nemo was just trying to snag a couple of high-value paintings from a ritzy New York apartment when things went haywire. He stayed just a few seconds too long and suddenly the door to the place closed in on him. Now he's trapped here in an apartment, which has barely any supplies inside it and whose owner isn't coming back for a long time. There are many survival movies about one person having to brave isolation and extreme conditions. Most take place in the harsh wilderness. Inside is about a single man braving the inside of an apartment that very quickly becomes a suffocating cage.
Armed with a peculiar premise and a restrained scope perfect for filming in the age of COVID-19, director Vasilis Katsoupis and writer Ben Hopkins frustratingly opt for a shockingly straightforward execution on Inside. There's little ambiguity to be found in the plot or visuals, the story follows a decidedly linear path, and the filmmaking is often quite standard in framing Nemo's plight. Other filmmakers like Chantal Akerman let their bold side flourish when utilizing a minimal number of sets, but Inside's imagery stays firmly in the lane of "competent but predictable." Individual shots rarely last too long, which undercuts the claustrophobia of this central premiere, while the hung paintings that surround Nemo are just a bunch of heavy-handed metaphors (we see a painted bird on the wall, representing the "animal" Nemo is becoming in captivity). The only real notable creative flourish is having Nemo be trapped with a refrigerator that plays "Macarena" whenever he opens it. Otherwise, you get what you expect here.
Not every movie needs to reinvent the wheel, but it's frustrating that Inside never utilizes its innately sparse aesthetic for something more. You've got Willem Dafoe, a large apartment, and a conceptually intriguing starting premise, shouldn't there be more meat on the bones of this movie? The primary issue is a simple one. Inside is torn between two impulses. It wants to work as a conventional survival thriller that thrives on only suspense, but it's too slow-paced to make your pulse race. Various forms of conflict our protagonist encounters here, even in the injuries Nemo sustains in his attempts to escape, aren't really that interesting or idiosyncratic. On the other hand, it also has ambitions of being a loftier meditation on art and the nature of free will. Committing to either of these aesthetics would make for a grand o'l time. There are plenty of filmmakers who could've even made Inside work on both levels. Since Inside never flashes much brains or thrills, though, it becomes a chore to get through.
Even the score by Frederik van de Moortel isn't especially interesting, a strange feat given that a movie largely devoid of dialogue like Inside would seem to offer a composer an opportunity for a really interesting score. Alas, van de Moortel mostly just delivers rote compositions that go in one ear and out the other. It's yet another way Inside squanders its potential. By the third act, Inside has got so little going on it resorts to channeling director Pier Paolo Pasolini (though falling far short of that classic filmmaker) in resorting to shock value imagery. By the end of this feature's runtime, you will see Nemo eating dog food and a pile of his feces, each of which got a brief cry of "ewwww!" from the audience I saw Inside with. However, there's no perverse fun or weighty themes being explored in these depictions of severe desperation. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe and sometimes a pile of feces is just a reflection of a movie grasping at straws to keep its viewers from looking at their phones.
At least we have Willem Dafoe around as our lead character. The always reliable Dafoe, who could lend genuine humanity and heft even to movies like Motherless Brooklyn or Death Note, hits some solid moments in what's basically a one-man show for his talents. The unimaginative approach to realizing the experiences of a man confined to a lavish apartment, however, does leave Dafoe hitting the same note repeatedly. Even he can't salvage something this frustratingly hollow. Given his experience with truly bizarre filmmakers like Lars von Trier or Abel Ferrara, it's puzzling that the creative team behind Inside couldn't think of more engaging and unexpected material to hand Dafoe.
Inside is bound to be the rare movie that unites both arthouse cinema devotees and general moviegoers in their frustration over a film. The former group will find Inside too shallow, while the latter collection of individuals will undoubtedly walk out of the movie after finding it "boring." Neither camp will be necessarily wrong. While being trapped with just Willem Dafoe in one location for 100 minutes sounds like it could be a blast, it turns out even the zestiest garnish cannot save a dish that's been so badly burned. Skip Inside, just stay home and revisit Bo Burnham: Inside instead. Now there's a visually compelling and entertaining project that's confined to just one location!
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