Inside

This movie starts off like a low-key drama with the atmosphere of a French “auteur film”, but that’s all a put-on, and “À l’Intérieur” (released as “Inside” in the US) quickly begins to shed its skin, revealing a thriller serving up suspense as its main ingredient. The surge of tension is punctuated by sudden episodes of shocking violence, acting almost as a periodic release valve for a plot that confronts the most terrifying of nightmares head-on. Prolonged horror-filled silences engulf the narration, isolating the protagonist’s residence within a sort of hermetically sealed bubble, heightening the sense of helplessness that comes through the screen.

With the help of a first-rate makeup department, fledgling directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (who also wrote the screenplay) set their sights on visual shock, unblinkingly lingering on horrific slashing and gashing, and drenching it all with gallons of dark, sticky blood (the CGI shots are much less convincing).

Also less convincing are the forced references to the chaotic French sociopolitical situation at the dawn of the new millennium, details which simply don’t make much of an impact on the story (“Cars are burning, cops are on edge“; “300 communities have been affected, 4,900 vehicles set ablaze“).

In many respects, then, it’s not all that much different from the contemporaneous “Frontier(s)” (2007), since both films are drenched in hyperviolence with content that has very little grounding in reality, thus limiting their relevance to the realm of pure entertainment. Otherwise, we would find ourselves having to deal with a blatantly implausible story that sinks under the weight of narrative inconsistencies and plot holes that are hard to justify.