The Inside

I just got blown away by this movie. Yes, by conventional film standards, it sucks: almost no story, no narrative arc, almost no dialog for the second half, nothing is ever explained, entirely full of insipid depthless characters who are either brutally loathsome (most of the men) or spend a hell of a lot of time doing nothing but wandering through a darkened building whimpering and screaming (most of the females), spends too much time indulging itself in banal torture porn conventions without going anywhere. I don't even think many of the characters had names. It doesn't even have a trace of the pretentious art-house conventions some films stoop to in order to try to justify the obvious lack of conventional movie-making skill.

And yet, I loved it. I was floored and genuinely scared watching it. I will definitely watch it again.

It's barely a story, it's more just a tapestry of murky, mounting fear, presented for its own sake. In some ways, it's comparable to Fellini in its broad, expositionless, near-abstract presentation of something more wrested from the subconscious than designed to satisfy the intellect.

Its focus on tone rather than narrative is reminiscent of, yes, found-footage origin The Blair Witch Project, but even moreso, of old Giallo horror films, films that reveled in the idea of fear and focused more on creepy mood than the more conventional trappings of movies as "quality" entertainment. No part of the movie is really all that dependent on any other part an any strict way, and it even abandons its "found footage" first-person perspective before it gets to the end. But even so, once it finds makes one of its several shifts and finds its footing about halfway through, abandoning what seems to be a banal brutality-as-spectacle approach and shifting to the stuff of deeper, more phantasmagoric nightmares, it becomes easily the only truly scary film I've seen in a long time. I'm not going to include spoilers, but there are moments in here as iconic and viscerally chilling as Nosferatu's long-fingernailed shadow gliding silently up a stairway wall.

I was genuinely surprised to see "The Inside"'s low 3.3/10 rating on IMDb, but it makes sense. It succeeds in a much less polished, and quieter, but otherwise similarly unconventional way as Lars von Trier's "Antichrist", another film that doesn't even remotely attempt to be enjoyable as a movie-going experience, which, like this film, deceived a lot of people into thinking it was a bad movie instead of quite the opposite.

I almost gave it 9 stars. I still might. This film knows exactly what it wants to be, and it unapologetically is that and only that, to the very core. If you don't like it, the problem may not be with the film, but with you. Despite the rocky beginning, this film's ultimate odd, offputting achievement deserves to be considered a misfit classic.

UPDATE: Second viewing, 10 years later.

I still agree with this review, for the most part. A few thoughts:

• the scene where the women are abused by the vagrants, before movie even starts going where it really is going to go, is much longer and more brutal than I remember. It's extremely difficult to watch, and in fact anybody could be forgiven for just turning the movie off before it's over, as it goes on for a very long time and the movie gives no clue that it's going to develop into anything beyond that long scene's extremely brutal, realistic, and very cruel violence.

• It really takes until the movie is halfway through before the stuff that redeems it for me eveb begins, and up until that point, it's difficult to see much redeemable about it. But, boy, there is a whole very long sequence in the middle, maybe a solid 20 minutes or more without any dialogue at all, that to me stands out as a classic of the horror genre, and is the entire reason this movie is memorable. There's not a lot of genuinely creepy horror movie footage out there, period. But this movie has it, even if you don't like any of what it's couched in.

• In the 10 years since I first reviewed it, it dropped from an average of 3.3 to 2.8 stars on IMDB. I totally understand that low rating. This movie has next to nothing in terms of movie entertainment conventions: characters, plot, dialogue, even much logic or explanation... nothing. And a lot of very unpleasant violence. Unless you appreciate its few unique merits, no, there's nothing here to see. But if you do appreciate them (and most people very understandably may not) it's definitely its own little unique, grisly, flawed gem.

Not the best film ever set in an abandoned warehouse (aka cavern, aka old asylum etc.), but not the worst.

The girls do overact it a bit, the psycho lads can act and give real menace to some of the scenes.

The supernatural or horror aspect is something that may have been seen as original (shaky camera and odd angles) some years ago. It comes across to me as getting a bit in the way of what could be a better film.

The 'hero' character, for want of a better description, makes the last twenty minutes drag a little with frustration that he, the character, seems to have no common sense in going into the situation he does, an unnecessary dragging out of the end. I enjoyed it, but it's quirky and not an A class entertainment at all.

A one-man-band Irish horror film, directed, written and acted by Eoin Macken. Unfortunately this gentleman displays an entire lack of understanding of what's involved in the film-making process, and despite the found footage hook on which he hangs his movie, this turns out to be one of the worst in a glut of badly made recent horrors.

Narratives are all about ebb and flow. You start off subtle, build up tension and atmosphere to a climax, then simmer things down before building up again. Things inevitably lead to a final climax which should be bigger and more dramatic than that which has come before. This story, which tells of a birthday party in an abandoned building that goes horribly wrong, gives you precisely 10 minutes of set-up before letting rip with a constant soundtrack of high-pitched screaming.

I'm not kidding: there's no script here, just characters screaming and shouting for what seems like an eternity. Maybe it was done to cover up a lack of acting talent, but whatever the reason it's absolutely horrendous. The director has no understanding of subtlety or how it can be used to make a quietly effective and genuinely frightening movie. THE INSIDE goes all-out early on and stays like that till the climax.

The movie is also unpleasant, featuring defenceless women being terrorised by rapist thugs, at least at first. Things change later on, heavily indebted to the likes of REC and THE DESCENT as the party-goers fall victim to something sinister and nameless. But it's not scary, none of it is remotely frightening. The film also ends about 20 minutes too early and tacks on an extraneous sub-plot which makes it even worse, and I didn't even realise that was possible. This truly is the pits.

This film is about 80% "found footage" so if Blair-Witch-like puts you off, probably not for you. Shot on video, it has the feeling of low- budget, but much better than many low-budget horrors.

Firstly, although the acting amongst the females is a little too 'screamy' they're in quite an unpleasant situation almost from the start, so it's understandable. The script is fairly realistic, and the antagonists that arrive are suitably menacing and unpleasant - this isn't a film full of nice people, and it's definitely worth its rating, more for the scenarios, than for any graphic blood-letting.

The story itself is fairly interesting, and the suspense quite gripping. It feels as though there's a prequel story to be told which would hold my attention.

Not a stand-out movie, but evidently a "one-man" show (written, directed, produced by same guy) that is far better than similar ones in this genre, and you definitely feel it has merit.

There are more than a few 'huh?' moments in terms of what the main characters do, but there is much left untold - and I feel it's okay for not every aspect of the events to be tidied up and given a neat explanation.

In summary, much better than I expected. Professional looking, and well executed. A film-maker to encourage and look out for.

This movie is bizarre and abstract. The horror imagery once it gets going is some of the best you will find in the found footage genre and far and away more frightening than most conventional horror films. It has its shortcomings and is uneven. The entire scene with the three guys showing up unannounced could have been replaced with character development as its really poorly done and unnecessary. But dont let that deter you because this movie cranks the horror into overdrive hahaha. Sure its not the witch or the wailing. Its low budget and unpolished. But if you like unexplained expressionistic horror this is for you. Not sure what the is going on except for maybe a demon or vampire mutant. Who knows. Its art house horror and it works if you are into these kind of movies.