Inside – Unrated (2007/French Horror/Dimension Extreme/Weinstein)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: D

 

 

Child birth is such an occurrent fascination in Horror films that it is not often noticed.  It can be post-modern, predictable and dull (especially if you count Being John Malkovich) and can often be associated with pain, blood, violence and death up to David Cronenberg’s films.  The French director Julien Maury takes a stab (ehh) at the subject in his recent film Inside (2007) but gets so caught up in an extended exercise in bleeding and cutting all over the place that it is like 82 minutes of slitting ones wrists, then moving on to other body parts out of boredom.

 

Sarah (Béatrice Dalle) was pregnant and in a severe car accident, now trying to recover, but on Christmas Eve of all holidays, a woman is stalking her to kill her and her child, unless she also has some other sick plans.  With a dab of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and everything else they can throw in, the film goes bonkers and abandons any sense of screenplay, story, plot or common sense as it drifts into the madness of bad moviemaking while failing to effectively portray the real life thing.

 

To call this ambitious is sketchy at best, but if you must see it, don’t expect much.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image has its moments, but while the bright scenes look good, the mostly dark scenes are noisy and become muddled.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes in both formats have decent dialogue and good use of surrounds, if not original.  Extras include a trailer for the film and a behind the scenes featurette.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo