Maybe the French know what they're doing after all

The readers who have been with us since the beginning know that, aside from chiming in with updates and opinions on Philadelphia sports, I like to throw in some posts on music and movies as well. I recently watched a new French horror film called Inside and it blew me away. The movie centers around sarah, a single pregnant woman who is home alone on the night before she is scheduled to give birth when a psychotic woman breaks into her home, intending to remove the child from Sarah's womb with a pair of scissors.



Nothing terrfies me more than the thought of a homicidal stranger sneaking around my home while I am sleeping, so naturally I found this movie's premise extremely unsettling. The film, however, has many other qualities that make it a compelling movie. The characters here are very well developed for a horror film, especially considering the short running time (83 min). Sarah is young and emotionally disconnected after losing her husband in a car accident early in her pregnancy. The audience finds it easy to empathise with her and ultimately identifies with her despite her apparent abivalence towards her unborn child. The Woman who is stalking Sarah, known only as La Femme, has a very menacing quality to her, however she remains a very feminine character; in this way the characterizations provide a unique take on a traditional genre that is very refreshing.



Characters and storylines aside, the element of this movie that blows away anything else out there is the gore. We are talking spurting arteries, pierced skulls, and lots of moments that will turn scissors into objects of dread. All of this, however, is done without any of the irony or humor that is found in tarantino and rodriguez films and the goal is never to gross the audience out like in the Saw and Hostel franchises. This movie uses blood and violence to evoke sublime terror and create an ambiance of real nihilism that becomes more and more dream like as the narrative progresses.

Despite being a true genre film, I recommend this movie even to those who don't regularly watch horror because at the core it is an excersize in visual poetry that is hard to come by in this age of hollywood blockbusters.