Inside

I get it. You want an American audience to see a great foreign film without bad dubbing or having to read subtitles. Sure, let's aim for that lowest common denominator. And they do! They aim right for the mouth breathers among us and hit a bullseye by taking out everything risky, terrifying, grisly, and intense about the original film, turning it into something that would play on Lifetime on a Sunday afternoon.

The makers of this movie try to take out everything edgy or visceral about it to make the film as palatable to a mainstream audience as possible, but this big twist is - this went straight to VOD and bypassed theaters altogether. It was released straight to horror fans who have mostly been appalled by how tame and neutered it feels in comparison to the original. You have to wonder who these people are making these remakes for.

Laura Herring and Rachel Nichols are good actresses. How did they end up in this mess? Was the script they read better?

Yet again, the film industry shows it's lack of imagination and lack of quality scripts by re-making an already great horror film. The original, L'interier, was a terrifying, bloody joyride from beginning to end. The roles were cast well. The story was tight. believable and scary as Hell. The direction was excellent as well. The movie was intense to the extreme yet it still felt like this could actually happen in real life! None of these components can be applied to this pitiful excuse of a re-make. Although Rachel Nichols is an accomplished actress, she struggles through this film like a rookie. It's not her fault as her part has been watered down via faulty script and poor direction. Actress Laura Harring was a poor fit for the part of "The Woman" originally portrayed by the amazing Beatrice Dalle. This film is yet more evidence that mainstream film markets have lost all originality and are increasingly dependent on re-making earlier, preferably foreign films or churning out low budget, poor replicas of successful ones. When I learned that an American re-make of the incredible French horror film "Martyrs" was being made, I swore to myself to never watch it. I broke that promise to myself and watched it. The film, like the new version of "L'Interiour" is nothing more than a milquetoast, re-visioning insult to the original. Gone was the sheer gut-wrenching violence perpetrated on these girls, Gone was the insane logic which help the group together, It took a film that reached out and punched you repeatedly in the gut and turned it into little more than a made-for-TV movie filled with rejects from the O.C. that had far less talent than the roles required. In fact, like "Inside", the re-make of "Martyrs: seemed to have been created solely for the late teen audience due to the removal of many of the key violent and bloody scenes Neither of these films needed to be re-made and the evidence is right in front of you. Forget these abortive attempts at capturing lighting and stick with the originals

Now anyone who has seen the French original, will tell you: if you only watch one movie, do watch the original and leave this be ... and I will second/agree to that! While I think it is going too far calling this a "lifetime movie remake" or a movie for kids or whatever - it is toned down quite a bit from the mayhem that was the original.

Having said that, you have quite a bit of blood and violence in this one. That doesn't mean it ever reaches the madness of the other movie as many will attest to. And then there is the ending ... on one hand it is interesting that this is not the same as the original ... but to be honest, you can tell throughout the movie, that it won't go the same route the original did ... I think I made it clear, but let me just emphasize once again: Please watch the French version of this! Unless you are squeamish and easily offended ...

Inside (2016)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

After the death of her husband, Sarah (Rachel Nichols) is a day away from giving birth to their baby but that night a mysterious woman (Laura Harring) breaks into her home with plans on taking the baby.

This here is a remake of the 2007 French film INSIDE and apparently it has been sitting on a shelf for a couple years before finally being released. I will admit up front that I enjoy watching remakes as I find it interesting to see someone take a different take on a familiar story. The original INSIDE is known for its vile and at times shocking violence and it doesn't take a brain scientist to know that what we saw in that film wouldn't make it to this remake.

Let me just say that everything in the original movie was a lot better than what you get here. As you'd expect, the violence and gore has been toned down to the point where you have to wonder why they even bothered to remake the film. But wait a minute, whereas the original film went for gore and violence, perhaps director Miquel Angel Vivas could take the material into a different direction and make a winning picture. Nope, that doesn't happen either and what we're left with is a watered down version of the original and even on its own this remake just doesn't work.

There are all sorts of problems with the movie including the fact that there's nothing good here. I guess you could say that Nichols' performance was good but Harring is so watered down and so bland as the killer that there's just no tension between the characters. The lack of any sort of real suspense is another major issue. It also seems as if the director is familiar with the original movie and he thinks that the viewer is too so he hints at stuff that fans of the original will remember but he just never goes through with it here. For example, when the pregnant woman is in the bathroom. Remember the scene with the scissors? Watch how it plays out here.

With no gore, no violence and no tension what are we left with? Not much. There aren't any surprises here and especially if you've seen the original. Even if you haven't seen the original this film just doesn't offer us anything. It's as if they simply didn't know what they wanted to do with the material so we're left with some hacked up version of the original. I'm not going to spoil anything but the ending is rather embarrassing as is the sequence with the cops. In fact, one of the cops here has to be the dumbest cop from any horror film I've ever seen.

INSIDE is an all around bad movie that at least manages to make the original seem even better.

Started off very slow and feeling like it was going to be another lame straight-to-dvd movie. then it surprisingly became pretty awesome, got me into it with good suspense. i was thinking it was going to be at least a 6 star rating, but then it went downhill with some really dumb stuff, some really bad acting, some terribly cheesy lines and more dumb stuff. i enjoyed the middle part of this movie a lot. overall tho, no bueno (1 viewing)