It’s What’s Inside

Grade: B

The premise of It’s What’s Inside will draw inevitable comparisons to Bodies Bodies Bodies. A heaping handful of 20-to-early-30-somethings congregate in a ridiculously nice house to play games, maybe sneak off to hook up, and partake in alcohol and a semi-legal green drug. Bodies Bodies Bodies did such a great job of introducing every character and making them memorable. By the end, there was no question or confusion of names. It’s What’s Inside falters in this department, but it gives us a MacGuffin that is entertaining to see go haywire. The enjoyment comes in sitting back and wondering where the spinning top will go.

The primary characters we follow are a couple: Cyrus and Shelby. They rarely, if ever, have consummated the relationship, and he has many solo quality time sessions in the bedroom with his laptop – but they otherwise seem like a healthy couple, and people constantly ask them if he’s put a ring on it yet. They are two of several friends who meet at Reuben’s house the night before his wedding, to celebrate his last hurrah as a single man.

Enter the character who comes along and changes everything: Forbes. He became the black sheep of the circle after his excessive partying and expulsion from school. Nobody was sure he would show up; he didn’t respond to any invites. But here he is. He has been participating in a secret study of a device that can transfer brains into other people (Freaky Friday/Like Father, Like Son/Vice Versa style), and he has brought the machine. They play with it, getting used to it surprisingly quickly, and it becomes a game of guessing who is temporarily who. It’s difficult when not everyone is honest about who they are. 

The movie, for the most part, plays it safe with the switches – only having men go into other men and women swap with other women. There does turn out to be some inter-gender stuff, and I would have loved a deeper dive into how different that must feel, physically. The score, with contemporary instrumental covers of various parts from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, is effective and pretty. I didn’t recognize a single face or name, but I wouldn’t object to seeing any of them again. My favorite was Madison Davenport.

The third act gets set up when something happens that will make switching back to their original selves much more complicated, if not impossible. By the time round two happens, they each have Polaroid pictures taped to their shirts with the face and name of the person who is currently in each body. That’s fairly helpful. This must have been a fascinating acting exercise for the cast. In the first round, these actors are playing other characters. When they do it again, they are trying to make it less obvious who they are, so they “get into character” best they can. Each person is a cartoonish exaggerated version of whoever’s body they are occupying. In other words, the actors are now portraying someone else’s impression of their original character.

Apparently, you can control whose body you go into, depending on where you sit when the transfer happens, or something. When matters become very tricky, a couple of them have specific plans and ideas. Each rapid-fire “here’s what we can do” speech is accompanied by a neat visual where a freeze-frame of each face forms a lineup across the screen, accompanied by Polaroids placed accordingly, that correspond with the proposed plan. Have I fried your brain yet? Mine was.

By the end, I gave up on trying to keep everything straight, and I recommend you do, too. You might be frustrated otherwise. The cinematography is quite heightened. Moonlight and various night colors are signified with a strong blue. Sometimes there is red for no reason. Scenes that take place in the greenhouse have green beaming in through the windows. Unrealistic, but lovely to look at, and it brought back the 90s television nostalgia, recently done so well in I Saw the TV Glow. To the degree that I could get a handle on characters’ names and personalities, I didn’t always care. However, It’s What’s Inside gets my thumbs up because of the madcap farcical zaniness. It’s silly, but the filmmakers don’t pretend it’s not. Just have fun. They’re not taking it seriously. Why should we?

Grade: B