Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
The idea of willingly spending Christmas alone might sound unusual, but Sarah Scarangella (Alysson Paradis) is no stranger to loneliness these days. The last four months have been — simply put — challenging. All she wants is a night of peace and quiet before everything changes again. Yet that wish is denied when a mysterious woman breaks into her home and threatens not only her life but also the one inside of her.
“Enjoy your last night of peace,” Sarah’s doctor tells her with no hint of irony or foresight in his words. Although Sarah is expected to see him on her delivery day, also Christmas, fate has something different in store for her. Neither Sarah’s mother Louise (Nathalie Roussel) nor her editor Jean-Pierre (François-Régis Marchasson) can convince the mother-to-be to join them on Christmas Eve. Sarah instead returns to her yule-barren home and dreams of Matthieu (Jean-Baptiste Tabourin), the husband she lost in a car accident four months earlier.
A quiet, anxious night alone is interrupted by a female visitor (Béatrice Dalle) asking to come inside and use Sarah’s phone. Sarah turns the stranger away only to see her again, staring at her menacingly through the window before disappearing into the night. The police inspect the house and find no trace of the woman, but Sarah later comes face to face with her in her own bedroom. Upon waking up to the pain of shears piercing her navel, Sarah is thrown into a life-or-death situation with no viable means of escape. In time the home invader reveals her twisted motivation; she wants Sarah’s baby.
Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s debut feature Inside (À l’intérieur) is remembered for being one of the bloodiest and most brutal entries in the New French Extremity. This distinct wave of transgressive films from the early 21st century, including Frontier(s), High Tension and Martyrs, is in part characterized by feral violence. Inside does not lack in blood or stomach-churning viciousness; it excels in horrific displays of tangible cruelty and emotional shocks.
Once Dalle’s ghostly character, known only as La Femme, jams the business end of her weaponized shears into Sarah’s stomach, there is hardly a moment of relief. Cuts, stabs and slashes are accompanied by discernible, bodily sounds that make every wound seem even more excruciating. In utero sequences of a CGI baby in distress as Sarah endures her injuries are startling. Pausing Inside to collect one’s self here and there is understandable seeing as so many scenes attack the audience’s eyes and ears.
The film’s title when taken literally might refer to Sarah’s body and home or La Femme’s physical trajectory. Another interpretation is the concept of turning someone inside out, emotionally speaking. As made evident by her visit to the doctor as well as her general demeanor, Sarah is depressed. She has been robbed of both her husband and the joy of expectancy. It can be argued Sarah is ambivalent toward her pregnancy; maybe even annoyed by it. A nurse smokes a cigarette in her presence, yet Sarah says nothing. In contrast to her gentle, comforting dream of Matthieu is a vivid nightmare of her newborn emerging from her mouth. This implies Sarah is scared of her baby, or at the very least, the future of raising him or her alone.
Sarah has internalized the bulk of her pain, and for this reason she is cut off from feeling much of anything other than grief and anger. That all changes once La Femme launches her attack. Sarah’s agony is given form and ripped out of her bit by bit. At the same time, Sarah’s maternal instincts finally come to the surface as she realizes what all is at stake. Anyone who suggests the heavy and graphic violence in New French Extremity movies serves no purpose overlooks the cathartic benefits. The characters in these stories are being pushed to feel and fight again.
Aughts horror is best remembered for gore and remakes with the two characteristics often blended together. Inside eventually received its own remake after years of delays. By then, REC’s Jaume Balagueró had moved on from the prospect of helming the English version himself. In his place was fellow Spanish director Miguel Ángel Vivas. The remake follows the same setup; a pregnant widow, Sarah Clarke (Rachel Nichols), wards off her own intruder (Laura Harring).
Vivas’ Inside still uses Balagueró’s script, which, as he told Fangoria back in 2008, emphasizes “the terror of the pregnancy situation more than the gore.” This along with other small and big changes amounts to a very different movie. While Maury and Bustillo’s story is more intimate, the remake comes across as too generalized. Prefacing the movie with the statistics of infant abduction makes this Inside behave more like a cautionary tale than a grief-driven and deeply personal revenge narrative. Most interestingly is the total overhaul of the original ending. What might have been seen as stirring on paper is conventional on screen. Nichols and Harring give their all to a remake that feels more safe than sharp.
Few horror movies are as intense and unsparing as Maury and Bustillo’s Inside. It stands out in a film movement teeming with haunting and visceral imagery. The eyes might find it challenging to read every inch of carnage as beauty, but there is an artform to these sorts of nonconforming movies. One that Inside‘s creators have mastered since the very beginning.
