We all have certain movies we love. Movies we respect without question because of either tradition, childhood love, or because they’ve always been classics. However, as time keeps ticking, do those classics still hold up? Do they remain must-see? So…the point of this column is to determine how a film holds up for a modern horror audience, to see if it stands the Test of Time.
DIRECTED BY ALEXANDRE BUSTILLO & JULIEN MAURY
STARRING ALYSSON PARADIS, BEATRICE DALLE, JEAN-BAPTISTE TABOURIN, AYMEN SAIDI
Say, friends, off the top of your dome, what is the number one goriest horror movie you’ve ever laid eyes on? Okay, now what is the most gruesome Christmastime horror joint you can remember unwrapping?
While there are tons of titles to choose from, few leaps to mind faster than the ultra-gory and peerlessly pulverizing French import INSIDE, directed by those clinically insane madmen Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Yes we jest out of love, but good god, you must have a screw or two loose to make a movie this relentlessly upsetting, topically terrifying and indefatigably bloody. Of course, a passable American redo of the film came out last year to middling critical responses, reminding us that remakes rarely outdo their predecessors, not to mention sort of solidified the original as an untouchable minor-masterpiece. And while we recognize 12 years isn’t the greatest amount of time to judge a movie’s longevity, its high f*cking time to see just how well INSIDE still plays into the new decade. Is it the definitive Christmas horror flick of the 21st century? Let’s see if INSIDE is the gift that keeps on giving when we put it up against The Test of Time below!
THE STORY: Scripted by Bustillo and Maury to be shot in chronological order of the screenplay, INSIDE opens with a fatally gruesome car accident that leaves a pregnant photojournalist named Sarah (Alysson Paradis) badly injured. We cut ahead to Christmas Eve, where Sarah makes arrangements at the hospital to deliver her overdue baby the following day. Sarah, bereaved over the death of her husband in the car accident, wants nothing more than to remain home alone on Christmas Eve to wallow in her grief and prepare for childbirth. When she arrives at home, she’s greeted by a knock on the door. A woman known as La Femme (Beatrice Dalle) asks to use Sarah’s phone, informing her that she knows her name and that her husband is dead. A police inspection at the house addressed at 666 comes up empty, and soon Sarah is lulled into a false sense of security. She slumbers peacefully.
Sarah awakes to a pair of shears impaling her pregnant belly, with the mysterious woman looming over her in sinister silhouette. The woman wants to carve Sarah’s newborn from her belly, for reasons we learn in the final reel. In the interim, it’s a simple tale of survival of Sarah, who must not only dress her wounds and protect her unborn child but fend off her assailant and call for help as well. Sarah holes up in her bathroom, which transforms from pristine white porcelain into an icky gore-sodden room full of red rum by the end. The graphic depiction of this bathroom is alone good enough to induce emesis among even the most intestinal fortitudinous. As various people show up in service of Sarah – her mother, employer, security guards, etc. – La Femme, without an ounce of compunction or hesitation, barbarously slaughters each of them in some of the most savagely graphic doses of carnage ever committed to celluloid. However, in the end, when we discover why La Femme acted so viciously, our sympathies and loyalties shift ever so slightly as to make us wonder who the real protagonist of the movie is in the end.
WHAT HOLDS-UP: Come on now, the exorbitant gore, the gut-churning grue, and the graphic carnage will always be the number one feat INSIDE the movie’s charnel house. Twelve years after it knocked and shocked the hell out of audiences, we can say with confidence that the makeup, practical FX work, and onscreen physical punctures still hold up as well as ever. Props and plaudits goes out to the French makeup and SFX team who favored real, practical, tangible, on-set blood and guts over the cheap and lazy use of CGI or other incredible artificial means. It’s one thing to feature this amount of blood, but combined with the number of onscreen violent assaults, INSIDE is still a contender for the all-time goriest horror flick ever assembled. Whether it’s the opening assault of La Femme, who pierces Sarah’s swollen navel with pruning shears, or the shot of Sarah’s boss getting his eyes gruesomely gouged out, or the scene where the security guard gets his head blown to smithereens… these scenes retain a visceral veracity that can neither be duplicated nor degraded moving forward. Of course, this description is perfectly crystallized in the final scene, in which La Femme performs a lethal makeshift C-section on Sarah, leaving her in a moribund state as her navel cavity is carved out like a goddamn Christmas ham!
Speaking of, the final scene of motivation recalibrates the entire means of INSIDE’s storytelling, which is something else that has a lasting effect in the movie. That is, as we watch the film, we immediately identify Sarah as the victimized protagonist. However, by the time the final shot of La Femme rocking Sarah’s newborn back and forth comes around our sympathies sort of shift in a way that makes you rethink the whole film. It turns out that La Famme was also involved in the car crash that took the life of Sarah’s husband. Well, it also took the life of La Femme’s unborn baby. Therefore, the entire movie is a vengeful act on behalf of La Femme to take away from Sarah what Sarah took away from her: a new life. An infant. As if the sheer graphic depiction wasn’t enough to leave viewers breathlessly aghast, this final “twist” functions precisely in the same manner as Sarah’s C-section… it rips our chest apart in horror!
Although I didn’t pick up on it that much the first time, the subtextual messaging in the film also holds up pretty well. The story is set in the backdrop of widespread terrorist arson in Europe, with radicalized immigrants the ones to blame. The title INSIDE, of course, refers to Sarah’s womb, as well as the interior of her home, but it may also connote being inside the country as well. Bustillo and Maury seem to be commenting on the dangerous nature of European immigration, which allows the most radicalized people in the world safe passage through the EU. In a way, this very issue is what sparked Brexit several years after the release of INSIDE. Therefore, the social commentary not only holds up, but in retrospect, it was also a prescient piece of prophecy that ended up becoming truer now than in 2007. I’m by no means an expert in this area, but in revisiting INSIDE, it’s hard not to see how its subtext was ahead of its time.
WHAT BLOWS NOW: at a breathless 75 minutes, there’s very little fat to trim away from INSIDE in 2019. I will say the CG images of the baby in the womb are a bit hokey from an FX viewpoint, but I can see how said imagery reinforces our sympathies for Sarah. One could also lament Sarah’s unwise decision to spend Christmas Eve alone, especially when she’s a moment’s notice from going into labor. These are all small issues though, as a movie this potent isn’t likely to show its age after just a dozen years. What blows much harder was the idea to remake the movie for American audiences when the original is an undeniable masterstroke.
THE VERDICT: More than a decade after its release, INSIDE holds rank as one of the all-time goriest films ever made, and easily THE most gruesome Christmas horror present to date. The storytelling is sharp and concise, the hyper-violent grue and concomitant FX work are second to none, and the trenchant social commentary seems to be ahead of its time. But perhaps the most lasting aspect of INSIDE is its twist ending, which redefines who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. Better yet, who the good girl is and who the bad girl is. After all, this movie puts women front and center despite the abject horrors they’re willing to endure to protect their children. So far, INSIDE is kicking The Test of Time’s ass!