Street Date: April 15

Official Synopsis:
Get ready for the most gruesome, terrifying, and disturbing film you’ve ever seen. Four months after pregnant Sarah loses her husband in a horrific auto accident, she is visited on Christmas Eve by a mysterious madwoman. Alone and desperate to save her unborn child, Sarah fights to stay alive as each of her potential rescuers die at the woman’s sadistic hands. With scene after scene of shocking carnage and escalating mayhem, Inside delivers unbelievably realistic gore that dares you not to look away.
  
Our Take:
The Extreme DVD series brought to us by Dimension films has always seemed like its only purpose was to buy horrendously made horror films from filmmakers at a discount value, and then put cool cover art on the box and make themselves a profit. Inside proved that theory wrong.

The film starts place right after a horrific car accident where we meet a pregnant woman, Sarah, becoming conscious and seeing her dead husband for the first time right beside her. From there it jumps to four months later as we see Sarah, still pregnant, coping with her husband’s death. There are no attempts here to foreshadow the horror to come here, rather the film just lets us gets to know Sarah and care about her.

All of this is done with fine performances (although it’s a French film so with the foreign language that’s never a certainty), subtle directing, and some well written scenes. Then the second half sees Sarah get trapped in her house and start to be tormented by a madwoman. This is where the film starts to turn into a bit of a standard horror flick. Luckily, though, it never becomes bad, it just tends to drift in and out of mediocrity.

The DVD just has The Making of Inside in the way of special features. It’s the only extra, but it’s pretty thorough and gives a lot of insight into the artistic process of making the film.

Inside is a solid film but it isn’t a great one. This isn’t some foreign masterpiece horror film just waiting to be discovered. It’ shot generically and never really adds anything to the genre. The ending is also rather unfulfilling and goes for shock instead of a proper conclusion to the story. My only wish was that a more talented director got their hands on this material and made a really cool, emotionally powerful horror film. As it is, it’s just a solid horror flick; no more no less.

Overall Picture:
Movie: B
DVD: B-

- Adam Rettek
Staff Writer