Inside

Grade: C

Inside is one of those survival situation movies where a character is trapped/stuck/etc the whole time, so really the only reason we keep watching is to find out if they get out. In Cast Away, it’s “does he get off the island?.” In Fall, it’s “do they ever get down from the tower?” In Buried, it’s “will Ryan Reynolds escape that coffin?” In Inside, Willem Dafoe plays an art thief, who is in the middle of lifting priceless paintings and sculptures from an art connoisseur’s luxury apartment, when the security system malfunctions, trapping him in.

I have yet to see a film like this that doesn’t raise “why couldn’t they have just…” or “why didn’t they try…” questions. Inside is no different, and is riddled with plot devices that seem too convenient. The art collector is out of the country for a month (of course he is), so the water and gas is turned off, and there is little to no food in the fridge. None of the windows are breakable, I guess there aren’t any that are openable for fresh air, and apparently Dafoe going out the same way he got in isn’t an option. When he sets off the smoke alarm in the hopes of getting the attention of the fire department, nothing comes from that, and nobody in the building seems to notice or care that it’s raining in that apartment. The water has to go somewhere, right? It was Paul Simon who said one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

Inside feels long, as these kinds of movies can be quite one-note, given the limited scope of the plot. I have seen 2.5+ hour films that moved along better than Inside does at an hour and 45 minutes. Things get bleak and avant-garde as Dafoe descends into madness. In a cruel through-line, he is privy to the real-time security footage from all around the building. He can watch the employees and tenants who are free, happy, not confined, and blissfully unaware that Dafoe is stuck in there, having to eat dog food and poop in creative places once the toilet can’t take any more deposits. He comes up with names for these people and gets to know their schedules. There’s a bizarre, ambiguous flashback where it’s implied that Dafoe’s people set him up to be stuck in there (and maybe some inhabitants of the building were in on it), but this doesn’t really get explored, and I’m not sure what they’d have to gain from doing this. Plus, by that point, it’s hard to tell what’s real.

They are too few and far between, but Dafoe gets to have some nice moments. At one point, he pretends to be hosting a cooking show when he makes his food, and another night, he is doing a stand-up comedy act. The freezer plays the Macarena if it’s left open for too long. I liked the scene where he sings and dances to it. We figure that in the end, he will either get out, kill himself, or die another way. One of those things does happen, and then absolutely nothing else takes place. It’s like the movie is telling us “There you go. There’s your conclusion. What more do you want from us?” Nothing is learned. There’s no journey. No arc. It’s an hour and 45 minute hiccup. As for Willem Dafoe, one of my favorite actors, lemme check out IMDb to see what he has coming up next.