Inside (À l'intérieur) is a 2007 French home invasion slasher film, developed by Alexandre Bustillo and directed by himself alongside Julien Maury. It concerns the attack and home invasion of a young pregnant woman by a mysterious stranger who seeks to take her unborn baby. (Information taken from Wikipedia)This movie could have been anything it wanted. It had potential for that. It could have been a nice psychological home invasion thriller with tension at its highest, or a disturbingly gory flick with enough shock value to give you nightmares for a month. The film tries to create an effective mix of both, but ends up making a considerable mess.Throughout the film, it is made clear that the filmmakers were given little money to work with; the CGI shots of the baby in utero are laughably bad and cut short the building tension on the scenes it appears on, while the practical effects used to create a horrifically violent shot of a pregnant woman being cut open with scissors are not that all convincing, nor shocking enough to make you cringe rather than go "oh, come on!".The overall concept is pretty great and original (there's something frightening and disturbing about a psychotic woman who breaks into a pregnant woman's house with the intentions of slicing her open and taking her baby), but its muddy execution effectively turns it into a gory mess that is as cliché as it gets.On the other hand, the film does have its cringe-worthy and edge-of-your-seat moments. The first half hour of the movie gets pretty intense and launches the overall tension into the stratosphere, and most of that is because of the acting. Alysson Paradis and Beátrice Dalle put on a show in front of the camera. You can almost feel the exact same pain and fear Sarah (Paradis) is feeling while locking herself in a neatly white (just imagine when blood begins splattering onto those walls) bathroom, as well as the sadness and desperation felt by the mysterious woman (Dalle) when we figure out her motives halfway through the film. The music, while not great, is innovative, experimental and helps bring those feelings to life.The gore, while mostly gratuitous and highly overwhelming, does also have its moments. Psycho woman's attack on Sarah's boss, for instance, is pretty well done; from the small clues he gets of the mysterious woman's lie about being Sarah's mother, to the point where Sarah's mother actually appears, the scene tends to effectively build on tension, until everything explodes in nice, juicy, red blood (and a free castration).The scene that really got on my nerves, though, was the very first sequence of the mysterious woman tormenting Sarah from outside her window, up to the point where she finally gets into the house and takes her time to bathe a pair of scissors in alcohol before jamming it into Sarah's belly button. Ouch!However, the first scene mentioned above is the one which marks the beginning of all the nonsense that is to come; from then on, there is little to no character development, and all the characters' behaviors start becoming extremely... illogical. They're not even stupid (like in most horror films), they simply don't follow any kind of logic. For instance, Sarah is trapped inside a bathroom for at least half of the attack; she doesn't even remotely considers going out the bathroom window. What? I mean, I get that she's pregnant and wouldn't be able to do it anyway, but come on, she's too desperate to not even consider doing it! That happens again when she finally manages to leave the bathroom and go downstairs: she checks the front door, and it is locked; and then she just moves to another room, not bothering to check a back door or an open window. Logic? Anyone?What's really done it for me, though (and got me laughing at how badly thought through this sequence was), was the fact that the psychotic woman manages to kill not one, not two, but THREE armed police officers, two of which she killed using just her scissors and knitting needles. What... the actual... f***? She even managed to slip a knitting needle out of her sleeve and killed one of them WHILE BEING HELD DOWN BY HIM. As if this wasn't laughable enough, one of the police officers got turned into a zombie. That's right! He got shot in the head earlier in the film and turns up alive to attack SARAH, and not the killer.There's also an awful tracheotomy Sarah performs on herself when she's not able to breathe, and not only does she pierces the wrong place (I could live with it if it was just this), but she also just patches up the hole with duct tape and it's all okay. Again... What?I'm really not asking for real world logic here, I just wanted SOME logical behavior from what initially appeared to be actually intelligent characters. Okay, maybe bring in some real world logic to change the fact that one of the police officers naturally wanders into a dark house from which shot sounds emanated from without at least calling for backup. Oh, and bringing a prisoner handcuffed with himself. Security logic thrown out the window here and definitely the worst sequence in this film.Bottom line is that Inside is an enjoyable and conceptually intelligent take on the home invasion genre, but its ambition to appear as more intelligent than it actually is (there's even a hidden social message in one scene) and its excessively gratuitous gore keep it from becoming a giant, truly impressive nightmare-provoking monster.

This films special effects were outstanding. There was no chance to take a breath from the violence as soon as it started. The killer uses a pair of scissors to attack almost every character, she uses these to pin hands to walls, jab kneecaps, shove in to groin area, slice face, even cut open a pregnant women and gut her after removing her baby, and so much more! Although the special effects were really well done, almost all of them were done in a house with no light except the bathroom. This means that it is really frustrating as it is really hard to see clearly what is going on. Also the stupidity of some of the characters was insane. They were ditching all common sense. One example is when one of the police officers realizes that there was this killer in the house and that there is a power cut but still goes in not alone, but with a criminal they had convicted earlier attached to him like a dog on a leash. Then when they see all of these graphically killed body's they are just looking for a way to turn on the power. Summary: This film has some amazingly graphic and cringy effects however these were overlooked by a rubbish story-line and character stupidity. And at the end I didn't really care about any of the characters or story.

After a long delay I decided to take a look at another title from The New Wave of France Horror.With having heard about the movie for ages,I decide that it was time to look inside.The plot:Driving home with her husband,Sarah and her unborn child get caught in a crash which kills her husband.4 months later:Christmas Eve: Spending Christmas Eve on her own,Sarah prepares herself to deliver the baby tomorrow.Getting set for an early night,Sarah hears a knock at the door.Checking the peephole,Sarah finds a women standing in the shadows saying that she needs to use the phone.Making up an excuse of her husband being asleep,Sarah is stopped in her tracks,when the stranger reveals that she knows Sarah's name,and also that she is pregnant with her dead husbands child. Threatening to ring the cops,Sarah soon finds out that the stranger is determined to get inside the house,and inside for Sarah's unborn child.View on the film:Locking Sarah and the handful of other characters down in the house,the screenplay by writers/directors Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury turn the house into a maze of dread,where every corner of the house reeks of a morbid atmosphere.Whilst the explanation for the attack does leave stretchmarks,the writers keep the tension tightly coiled,as the arrival of each new outsider leads to Sarah and the stranger taking more extreme measures in their battle.Covering every bit of Sarah's house in the New Wave of French Extreme Horror blood,the directors and cinematographer Laurent Barès give the film a wonderfully abrasive atmosphere,as each spilling of blood is joined by a chillingly stilted shot.Backed by a humming trance score from François-Eudes Chanfrault and pointed scissors editing by Baxter,the directors bask the title in an eerie supernatural atmosphere,as smog greens and yellows seep over the blood.Desperately trying to protect her unborn child, (shown in poorly done CGI) Alysson Paradis gives a great performance as Sarah,with Paradis pulling the horrified anguish across Sarah's face.Gliding round Sarah's house like a black widow, Béatrice Dalle gives an extremely creepy performance as the stranger,thanks to Dalle screeching out pig squeals with a devilish glee and keeping the strangers face stone cold,with no sign of humanity,as Sarah finds herself unable to stop the stranger from getting inside.

This is a movie about every mother's worst nightmare; the fear of having your baby taken from you. A relatively taboo subject, that get's tackled masterfully in this flick. I was thoroughly surprised at how intense and beautiful this movie was, given that it largely takes place inside a house. This film is disturbing, violent and bloody but it isn't without artistic value. This is extreme art house cinema, with lots of symbolism.The high- and low-key settings is used beautifully and really draws in the viewer and encourages you to think about what you see, while forcing you to concentrate about every scene. The colors are used so excellently, so subtlety and yet not so subtlety if you know about movie symbolism. It directly affects your mood and sets the tone perfectly, along with the intense and sad music. This is a movie, that makes you feel something that you don't want to feel, but that it reminds you, that you are alive. Even though I didn't understand a word they said (watched it without subtitles), I understood everything as it unfolded right before my eyes. That is no easy task to accomplish for a movie, spoken in a language you do not understand. After waiting many years to watch this film, simply because I thought the plot sounded incredibly generic, my only regret is that I can't unwatch it. Not that I thought it was too extreme, but simply because I haven't watched a movie yet that holds up to this amount of artistic value, and certainly not in the horror genre. I have watched a few art house cinema, but I thought they were boring. I have yet to watch any of the other movies from the New French Extremism, but I can't wait to get started. This is not a movie for the faint of heart or pregnant women. But if you like extreme, thought provoking horror and films, that isn't extreme just for the sake of controversy, then you're gonna love this. I will definitely buy this movie to add to my collection sometime soon.