Tags:
Film: Inside
Year: 2016
Director: Miguel Ángel Vivas
Writer: Jaume Balagueró, Manu Díez and Miguel Ángel Vivas
Starring: Rachel Nichols, Laura Harring and Andrea Tivadar
Review:
This is the American remake to the French Extreme film of the same name. The official synopsis for this version is a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy is stalked by a stranger who is obsessed with her unborn child.
Now I need to lead off stating that I saw the French version first and it is much better. I am not going to compare them throughout this whole review, but I do need to say a few things. The first is that I personally don’t see a need to remake the film like they do here. I will say that this film removes all of the extreme violence of the original, but it does still have some pretty realistic effects. If you can’t handle the French version, I do think this one would be easier to check out.
What I did like about the story to this one though is that they alter some plot points. In this film our protagonist/victim is Sarah Clark (Rachel Nichols). She loses the father of her child in a car accident. Something that was different for this film is that she seems to have lost her hearing in the car accident. I feel the film does bring this up during the attack, but it kind of loses itself in the fold. I felt they could have done more with it. The woman that attacks her, trying to get her unborn child is Laura Harring. Her character is known simply as The Woman.
Something else I liked about this film was that the police officers that arrive during the climax are a little bit more realistic in how they try to handle the situation. I don’t completely buy what Alice Donovan (Andrea Tivadar) tries to do, but it was a little better than what happens in the original. The other thing though, is one of the officers thinks something is up, he’s not going to go back to the house without back-up. I did have an issue there, but it seems like it was done to move the plot. I was not a fan of the ending of the film and it was disappointing. It is more on the optimistic side.
Now I will say that the acting was pretty good in my opinion. I like Nichols and thought her portrayal was good. Harring I thought was good as the antagonist as well. Her friend that comes over to check on her was good and as I said before, I thought the police were realistic in their portrayal as well. I actually give the police a nod in this film as being better than the original.
Something that wasn’t better though was the effects. This film really removes most of the blood and some of the iconic scenes. It is really just watered down. With that said though, the effects used are good. They seem to be done practical, which is good and I thought the color of the blood was good as well. I personally just wanted more of them.
The editing though does seem to have issues. It does build tension to the climax, but I think it was lacking a bit. I do think that part of this is that I’m jaded by the tension the original builds due to the nature of the violence. This one doesn’t seem to have as high of stakes. I kind of felt that the film moves toward the climax, but it never really got me excited or that Sarah was in as much danger as I felt she should be. The film though was shot very well and I love the depth of the shots used. Something that makes me uneasy is things happening behind me without me seeing and this film actually plays on that.
The sound design of the film was good in that I thought the use of the hearing aid was interesting. When she’s not wearing it, we can’t hear anything. This did build some tension for me, because the woman could be moving behind her without her knowing. The score itself didn’t really stand out, but I didn’t have anything against it.
Now with that said, I don’t feel like this is a horrible horror film, but it is just a necessary remake. I personally feel this film probably shouldn’t have been made as it really doesn’t add enough to stand alone. Now I do think that the film does do some interesting changes to the story, but it also changes the ending which I wasn’t a fan of doing. It also kind of moves along and not building enough tension to really work. The removal of the extreme violence hurts the film, but the effects used in this film were good. They seem to be done practical and the blood looked good. I just wish there was more. The sound design did some good things, but the score itself really didn’t. I would say that this is a very slightly above average horror film on its own and being a poor remake of a really good foreign film.
My Rating: 6 out of 10