À l'intérieur (2007)

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:

5 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.

a near-great horror-fest from French first-time directors

Inside will get under your skin, no pun intended. It's only major fault, for me, was with a twist in its final moments where a character reveals a significant personal detail from the past that suddenly is meant to change or shift things so that everything isn't so black and white, but its simply contrived and unnecessary. The rest of the picture, about a woman, Sarah, who got in a car crash while halfway pregnant and riding with her husband (who died) finds herself close to giving birth and it nearing Christmas Eve (this isn't mentioned much though I suppose it's meant for super-obvious reasons I didn't notice close enough)... and one night a woman knocks on the door, saying something insidious and knowing about Sarah, and tries to break into the house to get her baby! She comes back another night as Sarah sleeps, inside the house, and is about ready to take a pair of scissors right to her belly button. It only gets grislier and darker from here on out.

Make no mistake, reader: this is one of those f***-ed up movies that you hear about from a friend or somewhere online and its re-iterated how much it will mess with your head if you're, say, pregnant yourself or thinking about having children - or, perhaps, need reassurance *not* to have children. Certainly the Woman, as she's simply credited, is like one of those forced of pure evil akin to Anton Chigurh: nothing will get in her way, nobody no-how, and she can kill anyone with stealth and speed and accuracy. That she wears a black dress and has a look to her, provided by the absolutely fantastic actress Beatrice Dalle, a face of rage and desperation but glazed over by a kind of determination that seems to make everything so clear as blood spills everywhere and really bad things happen like, for example, Sarah accidentally killing her actual mother when she thinks its the Woman. She is so terrifying and effective that, the twist notwithstanding, she's easily in a top twenty of the best female villains in screen history - that's how horrific she is.

But it's also the direction that counts, the mood. If a horror director can set the mood right, and let the audience sink into it, then half the work is done. And first time directors in this case have done a wonderful job of creating dark spaced and diffuse sets, of the harsh light in that bathroom Sarah is locked in or in the soft orange of the living room of the house. It's extremely tense direction and cinematography, and the music, however jarring in a few spots it doesn't need to be (it almost sounds like forks hitting across a plate in a few instances), fits the mood intended. And that final shot is almost iconic as far as recent horror movies go. Inside is not something you'll immediately rush out to see, perhaps, since it's subject matter isn't the 'lets get a bunch of friends and have a party' kind of horror movie. This is a 'sit alone at home and cry inside, again no pun intended, while a movie makes you its bitch.'