As the new wave of savagely violent French horror films continued traumatizing audiences throughout the 2000s, it seems that no taboo was sacred. However, while the exceedingly vicious movement had already given us burgeoning lesbian urges summoning forth a burly, thrill-killing, necrophile in Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tesion and the neo-nazi cannibals of Xavier Gens’ Frontier(s), arguably one of the most unsettling of the bunch made its bloody bow somewhere between these two towering terrors.
Directed without an inch of mercy between them, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s Inside delivered grotesque thrills and uncompromising gore while targeting that most defenceless prey – the unborn baby – as the depression wracked mother attempts to fend of the crazed attacks from a mad women desperate to perform GTF (that’s Grand Theft Foetus, if you really wanted to know). So strap yourselves in, because this film makes the agonies of childbirth seem like a mild case of trapped wind in comparison.
Four months after the car crash that killed her husband, heavily pregnant photojournalist Sarah Scaranglla has healed from her physical wounds, but is still lost in the numbing mists of a heavy depression as the sun sets on a wet Christmas Eve. While her boss is anxious for her to return to work due to all the political unrest that seen rioting in the streets, Sarah’s brooding, prickly demeanor is pushing people away, particularly her own mother.
However, that night, as she awaits her Christmas Day appointment to induce her baby, she receives a knock on her door from a strange woman the credits only refers to as “La Femme” and after a spot of fairly alarming behaviour, Sarah calls the police who unsurprisingly arrive to find absolutely nothing. However, after they leave, and Sarah settles down to get some rest, we find that the mysterious woman has gained entrance to the house and grasped herself a formidable of absurdly sharp scissors in order to perform and unimaginable task.
You see, this woman apparently has lost her own baby and has decided that things would be all even stevens if she simply took Sarah’s to restore the balance; but the horrific catch is that she has no intention to wait until the child is born before she performs the deed – hence the scissors…
Barely fending off her first attack, a bleeding Sarah takes refuge in the bathroom while this bestial psycho attempts to break in and to snip that baby right out of her stomach, but as the night progresses and each woman commits even more brutal acts to get what they want, Sarah soon realises that the two are actually linked in the cruellest way imaginable.
As out and out nasty as most of the French new extremity movement is, there’s something about having the life of a newborn baby on the line that makes Inside extra upsetting, so hats off to Bustillo and Maury’s energetic attempts to milk the disturbing concept for everything that it’s worth. For example, not only is everything that transpires hugely affecting because it’s being perpetuated on a very pregnant Alysson Paradis (younger sister of Vanessa) and the directors have come up with the magnificently triggering idea of flashing up images of her unborn baby getting buffeted about the womb and even recoiling in horror as its mother fights her way through the night. It’s a breathtakingly nasty idea, but it’s one that succeeds in grabbing you by the hair and ruthlessly bashing your face directly into what’s a stake as this struggle for motherhood goes to some typically extreme places.
Of course, what with this being a card carrying member of French new horror, there’s a ton of political baggage hanging around in your periphery to keep things extra heavy and, much like Frontier(s), Inside takes pains to announce all the social turmoil and upheaval crisscrossing the country involving immigrants that keep things sadly still pretty topical, but the movie is far more successful when digging its clawing digits into this frenzied war of attrition between these two prospective mothers. Due to her grief, Sarah is hardly exhibiting that glow that all expectant mothers apparently have, but her depression goes far beyond the “baby blues” to the point where her mothering instincts have all but evaporated and she’s suffering Alien-style nightmares as a result.
Enter BĂ©atrice Dalle’s fearsome fame, who proves to be the vengeful, murderous mirror image to the agonisingly numb Sarah as her desire for a baby has made her more deranged than Cujo let loose in a natal unit. As she turns things upside-down like a scissor wielding hurricane, everyone in Sarah’s orbit suffers in staggeringly graphic attacks that managed to shock even this old gorehound and everything just seems worse when one of your characters are decidedly in the family way. Dalle, no stranger to extreme cult cinema thanks to her role in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue, makes for a legitimately imposing, yet tragically feral villain as she slinks around Sarah’s house in a black dress, stabbing testicles and sparking up the occasion ciggy in an oh-so-French kind of way.
The parallels between the lead’s various approaches to motherhood are a nice touch, but what will grab your attention more than anything else is, obviously, the searing violence that the director’s camera stubbonly refuses to cut away from and if you think that you’ll soon get acclimated to the frenzied hand impaling, face exploding and artery lancing grue, there’s still that devastating, hollowing ending to prove you horribly wrong.
However, what makes Inside stand out from your average bloodbath is those little moments of poignancy dotted inbetween the crimson splatter. A blinded policeman inadvertently becomes a far bigger threat to the baby than the woman ever will, hinting more at the political issues that still plague the country even and the method the movie uses to finally have Sarah get in touch with her mothering instincts is as sadly moving as it is utterly devastating. And lest we forget, whenever the movie’s Hitchcockian cat and mouse starts to wane, there’s always a dependable flash of an unborn baby in distress to give you that extra uncomfortable oomph when you least want it.
Merciless in its mission to unsettle, Inside is stuffed full enough nail-gnawing tension and chaotic splatter to give even the most hardened cinemagoer a pregnant pause.
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