Out Tomorrow - Inside. Blood, guts and scissors. (****4/10)
Inside is the latest horror-splatter movie released by Dimension Extreme. It’s a French film, starring Alysson Paradis and Beatrice Dalle. Dalle is a very well-known actress in France, where she has been one of the hottest women around for a long time. She is as well-known for her crazy behaviour off the screen as she is for her amazing presence on the screen. She was apparently cast to play opposite Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, but had to turn the part down when she couldn’t get an American work visa because of her arrest record. Alysson Paradis is a relatively unknown actress about whom I know almost nothing. The two of them are the central characters in “Inside”, Paradis as Sarah, a pregnant woman, and Dalle as an utter maniac who has invaded Sarah’s house.
In this case, it is Dalle who really needs to carry the movie, and this has got to be one of the most entertaining roles an actress can play. The homicidal, raving lunatic who kills everyone. But she isn’t really up to the task here. She’s kind of…too hot, I think? And even when she gets that mad-crazy look on her face, she still looks a little like she’s posing for a modeling shoot. Which means the horror will have to carry the film. And to a certain extent, it does. The people who made this movie must have cleaned out every fake-blood supplier in the thirty miles surrounding the shoot. Heads blown in half, eyes stabbed with knitting needles, faces burned off, and all kinds of gruesome, bloody death. Also, there’s a self-performed tracheotomoy. But most of the damage in the film is done with sewing scissors. Which is gory as all hell.
As far as these movies go, there is almost never anything new, plot-wise. And there is never anything interesting in the dialogue or the actual filming. The reason they are made is simply to sue more blood and create more gore than the last guy. And “Inside” falls somewhere in the middle. It’s certainly a first for me. The first time I have seen a French splatter-gore movie. The first time I have seen scissors used so gruesomely as a weapon. And the first time I have seen Beatrice Dalle play anything but the sexy vampish ingenue. But all these things do not make the movie original, they just mean I ought to expand my horizons. There are some scares, and lots of gross, but Inside is just not that great. It comes out tomorrow, May 13th, from Alliance Films.