Inside (2007)

Being a man, I have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant. I can, however, imagine that most women carrying a baby would protect its life with every fiber of their being. Allowing harm to come to something you’re solely responsible for would have to be the most gut-wrenching feeling in the world. Inside, one of the recent crop of unsettling films from France, takes that premise and runs with bloody abandon.

As the film begins, a pregnant lass named Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is involved in a car crash that leaves her scarred and minus a husband. Four months later, on Christmas Eve, she’s receiving a final medical exam before being admitted the following morning for childbirth. Predictably depressed with the loss of her spouse, Sarah returns home alone. She doesn’t stay that way for long, however, as a mysterious woman (Beatrice Dalle) knocks on her front door.

Concealed in the shadows, the visitor knows about Sarah‘s husband, and she wastes no time in terrorizing the pregnant widow. Before long, she’s crept into the house, grabbed a pair of scissors, and looks ready to perform a brutally impromptu Caesarian Section. After a brief struggle, Sarah locks herself in the bathroom and waits for help to arrive. For the rest of the film, various characters attempt to come to the rescue (including the cops, Sarah‘s boss, and her mother), while the deranged woman does her best to send each of them to an early grave.

The final minutes of Inside are especially gruesome, and those with a weak stomach should stay away. Hollywood horror seems warm and fuzzy by comparison, and the directorial duo of Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have wrung every ounce of blood from the pores of their creation. Faces are roasted, skulls are blown apart, and white walls are drenched in the red rain of an arterial spray…and then there’s that final scene.

But the creepiest part of Inside isn’t any particular death scene; rather, it’s what I like to call the “baby cam.” At certain stages of the film, we get an inside-the-womb look at Sarah’s baby as it reacts to the struggles of its mother. The soon-to-be-born infant is obviously rendered with computerized effects, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing when the child begins to thrash about with a grimace on its face.

This isn’t a horror film which tries to overload you with characterization in the first act. We learn, for example, that Sarah is sad because her hubby is dead, and she works as a photojournalist when she’s not knocked up. That’s about it. As for the crazed assailant, the reason for her actions isn’t learned until near the very end of the film (although you may be able to figure it out long before).

While the plot can seem a bit repetitive at times, Inside manages to effectively hide its lack of depth beneath layers of blood and embryonic fluid. Lesser mortals will be driven screaming from the room, but die-hard gorehounds will find this French bloodbath to be a refreshing change of pace.

A slaughterhouse is also known as an abattoir, which is taken from the French verb abattre (meaning “to strike down”). After watching Inside, that all makes perfect sense.

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