À l'intérieur (2007)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Directors:

Alexandre Bustillo
Julien Maury

Writer:

Alexandre Bustillo (writer)

Release Date:

13 June 2007 (France)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

Four months after the death of her husband, a woman on the brink of motherhood is tormented in her home by a strange woman who wants her unborn baby.

Plot Keywords:

Night | Baby | Christmas Eve | Death | Bathroom

Awards:

6 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Béatrice Dalle	...	La femme
Alysson Paradis	...	Sarah
Nathalie Roussel	...	Louise
François-Régis Marchasson	...	Jean-Pierre
Jean-Baptiste Tabourin	...	Matthieu
Dominique Frot	...	L'infirmière
Claude Lulé	...	Le médecin
Hyam Zeytoun	...	Policière municipale
Tahar Rahim	...	Policier municipal 1
Emmanuel Guez	...	Policier municipal 2
Ludovic Berthillot	...	Policier BAC
Emmanuel Lanzi	...	Policier BAC 2
Nicolas Duvauchelle	...	Policier BAC 3
Aymen Saïdi	...	Abdel

Also Known As:

Inside (USA) (festival title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gruesome and disturbing content, and language.

Runtime:

83 min | USA:75 min (R-rated cut)

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX | DTS-ES

Certification:

France:-16 | USA:R (cut) | USA:NC-17 (orginal rating) | Japan:R-18 | Finland:K-18 (self applied) | Argentina:18 | Mexico:C | Germany:(Banned) (cut) | UK:18

Filming Locations:

Paris, France

Company:

La Fabrique de Films

Trivia:

In the scene where the three policemen come check on Sarah, you can see to the left end of the screen the house number, it's 666.

One of the most shocking and effective horror films I have ever seen.

For several many years, the French have been putting out unusual horror movies. Les Diaboliques(1955) was one of the most notable examples. Recently, French horror films have been all about extremities. Calvaire(The Ordeal) dealt with sexual misunderstanding, bodily torture, and dementia and the most extreme cases of disturbed behavior in order to build tension, horror, suspense, and even twisted dark humor. Haute Tension(High Tension) was an homage to the early films of Wes Craven, adapted for the 21st Century. It was initially rated NC-17 by the MPAA and, while I personally didn't care for it and found it silly, it was hailed by fans of horror as a return to the early days of splatter shock cinema. Sheitan(2006) was a return to backwoods horror combined with horrific elements of Satanism. Recently, Frontier(s) was a successful European extreme version of torture porn American films such as sAw and Hostal that catered to the audience's bloodlust by delivering the gore in a way that those films failed to. Now, we have INSIDE. All I can say is that this film proves that it is the French that are making some of the most demented films. After watching this, I truly wondered whether the French people had or had not gone completely insane.

This is one of the few horror films I have seen that just does everything right. It deserves to be put with the original Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Rosemary's Baby, and The Shining as one of the scariest films ever made. It is also one of the most polarizing and disturbing films I have seen and it gives movies like Irreversible, Happiness, Cannibal Holocaust, Blue Velvet, and Monster some serious competition. If I were to describe this film in one word, it would be extreme. This is most definitely one of the most extreme films I have ever come across. It's the first film that has been put on the Dimension Extreme that really deserves to be on there. Dirty Sanchez was basically just an English Jackass:the Movie but with more gore and more shocking acts(big whoop). Broken was a silly B movie. Teeth and Black Sheep were just gore comedies. Inside is where it's really at!

The plot is very simple. It is about a pregnant widow and the events that transpire on Christmas Eve one night in which a mad woman invades her home. This may not sound that bad to read, but trust me when I say that things go from bad to worse. The film is 80 minutes of increasingly shocking and inhuman acts of cruelty, extreme horror, and a very high amount of suspense. It just gets worse and worse. This film makes every torture porn movie look completely quaint. Imagine Halloween but pumped up on steroids, and that's NOT an exaggeration.

This film starts out incredibly bleak and depressing in the first 20 minutes. Then it turns really shocking really quickly. Then it goes from shocking to cruel, to immoral, to extreme, to nearly unwatchable, and then finally completely unwatchable. About 30 minutes in, I had to pause it and collect my thoughts. I couldn't believe what I was watching. I had no idea that this film was as shocking as it was. However, if I had known that the film would only get ten times worse in just 2 minutes, I probably would have been too scared to watch. This film doesn't mess around. It is an uncommonly effective piece of film-making. It is one of the most depraved films I have ever watched.

So why should people see this? If it's so disgusting and horrible, why should people bother getting these images imprinted in their mind? I think this film deserves to be watched because it is, simply put, the best of it's kind. Not only that, but it is one of the few horror movies that shows women being in power rather than men. It is, in it's own twisted way, the ultimate chick flick. The two women in this film that battle it out are two of the greatest female characters I have seen in a horror film. The main female character, in particular, is kind of like a woman from a Russ Meyer movie! There are parts of this film where she TRULY kicks ass. I watched this wanting to cheer for her over and over again. She definitely fights back, and I love that! Add to that a great twist that leads up to an ending that is one of the creepiest endings ever, a couple of very emotional moments that are truly tear jerking, a great musical score, haunting and gorgeous cinematography, and some brilliantly done gore, and you have one of the greatest French horror movies ever made.