16.4.08

An Open Letter to the Makers of Inside


(in case you don't feel like reading)

Fuck You.

Fuck you for thinking that just because you've embraced hypergore like no one in history you've accomplished something of value.

Fuck you for assuming that just because the majority of this hypergore was directed at a pregnant woman people would be so distracted by your transgressing of social mores that they wouldn't notice that you'd written an awful fucking movie, full of the stupidest, most illogical, fucking unbelievable actions any people have ever taken in a film.

I'm going to give some examples for all the people who weren't involved in this awful fucking movie, so they'll know just what a fucking disaster it is. Filmmakers, you can skip down to the fucking end.

A pregnant woman, after seeing a crazy fucking bitch try to punch her way through a glass door with her bare hand, after first trying to talk her way into the house and then taunting the woman about her dead husband and general helplessness, elects to stay alone in the house the night before going into the hospital to have the baby induced. It's not like she doesn't call the police. She does, but they don't have enough manpower to leave people hanging around all night, what with the race riots going on. It's fucking France, after all. They do, however, have enough manpower to drive her over to the hospital and check her in early, they just fucking don't, despite the fact that a psycho fucking bitch who knows all about her is hanging around stalking her.

Then there's the old fucking standby of someone smashing someone's head with a lamp, then instead of continuing to smash that head over and over again while they're stunned, running off, giving the psycho fucking bitch time to recover.

Two different people walk into a dark house at night without announcing themselves loudly, despite the fact that they only expect one person to be in the house when they get there. The second of these people, the pregnant woman's mother, sees that the house has two strangers in it, and yet doesn't call the police, or bother to investigate who this dangerous fucking stranger pretending to be her is, but rather just wanders off looking for the pregnant woman, when just fucking yelling for her would have had the same fucking result, this being a tiny fucking French house and all.

The pregnant woman, hiding in the bathroom, sits by the door for ten fucking minutes while the psycho bitch has a conversation and shares a drink with the woman's boss, who is under the impression that the psycho bitch is the woman's mother. This is plenty of time for the pregnant lady to get a phone, or a weapon, or call for help, or run out of the fucking house, but she elects not to. And don't try to tell me that she can't hear what's going on. We're made perfectly aware of the layout of the house, and it's fucking TINY. You couldn't whisper in the basement without hearing it in the attic.

Apparently, in addition to rendering you so physically weak that you can't overpower a tiny fucking psycho goth bitch, being pregnant renders you fucking deaf, so when your mother comes walking down the hall calling your name, you won't realize it's her and will wind up stabbing her to fucking death in an ironic turn of events.

By the way, this is the point where I just fucking announced FUCK THIS FILM. She didn't know it was her fucking mother outside the door, despite the fact that her fucking mother was calling her fucking name, and who doesn't know their own fucking mother's voice?

Also, the filmmakers think their audience is so fucking thick that they won't notice how fucking thin the bathroom door is when the psycho fucking bitch chops her way through it, and then start wondering why the woman couldn't hear everything that was going on in the house earlier, or make any kind of loud noise or just fucking SCREAM FOR HELP.

Then the cops show up. And they prove just as fucking incompetent and idiotic as everyone else in the whole fucking film. They're not entirely to blame, after all, the pregnant lady is too busy trying to move a dresser from under the doorknob to, oh, I don't know, FUCKING SCREAM FOR FUCKING HELP!?!?

Of course, this entire movie takes place in a universe where people in pain don't fucking scream! When the pregnant woman finally lets out a fucking yelp, the cops decide to arrest the crazy fucking bitch. Of course, the cop left to do it proves entirely incompetent to restrain the fucking psycho bitch. You know, he can restrain a rioter, but one spindly psycho fucking goth bitch? No, that somehow escapes him because he doesn't have the slightest idea how to control a suspect, you know, kneeing them in the back, pushing them against walls, trapping their elbows to keep them from turning. Day one stuff from cop school. He doesn't have a fucking clue. Then, when he winds up getting stabbed in the fucking eye, he doesn't scream, so the other cop upstairs doesn't have a fucking clue that there's a psycho fucking bitch sneaking up on him with a gun.

Luckily, there's third fucking cop outside, along with an arrested rioter. He hears the shots inside, and then doesn't fucking call for backup. That's right, there's shooting inside, and he can't raise his partners on the radio, but he doesn't call for any fucking backup. No, he just rushes inside. And when he finds everybody dead, and the pregnant woman horribly injured in the bathroom, what does he do? That's right, he still doesn't call for any fucking backup.

To be fair, the film makes it abundantly clear that there is rioting going on throughout the city, so the cops are pretty fucking busy. But hey, you know what cops take a lot more fucking seriously than rioting? Fucking cops getting fucking shot and stabbed to death.

Then the lights go off in the fucking house, and rather than phone for a fucking army division to come and kill the crazy fucking bitch, the last cop drags his fucking prisoner downstairs to look for the fucking fuse box. That's right. There's a 'what happened to the lights, let's go find the fuse box' scene in this fucking movie. This movie is worse-written than Friday the 13th Part Fucking 3-D. At least in that film when the fucking lights went off and Chuck went looking for the fucking fuse box, he didn't know for a fucking fact that Jason had switched the power off to lure him down to the fucking basement. This cop, on the other hand, fucking knows exactly fucking that—as well as the fact that the psycho fucking bitch is laying a trap and took a fucking gun off one of the dead fucking cops. So what does he do? That's right, goes wandering off into the darkness and gets shot in the fucking head. What did he hope to fucking accomplish by turning the lights back on? It's not fucking clear. Give the psycho fucking goth bitch a clearer shot at him? Perhaps. Oh, and by the way, he doesn't even call for fucking backup before doing this stupid fucking thing. Not because the film would be over if he did (of course, if he'd just protected the pregnant woman in the bathroom until help arrived, the film would have been over, and he'd have deserved a fucking medal), the rest of the film takes place over a short enough period of time that he could have realistically called for help, and backup just didn't arrive until the fucking film was over.

I just watched the fucking scene again and scoured the fucking subtitles and I still don't have the slightest fucking idea why he went to look for the fucking fuse box.

So, of course, the cop gets shot in the fucking head, and his prisoner gets stabbed in the fucking head, and then it's down to a struggle between the pregnant woman and the psycho fucking bitch. Their fight moves into the kitchen, and in case we didn't get the point that she's fucking pregnant, the film keeps cutting to a CGI look inside her fucking uterus, so we can see just how much it fucking sucks to get beaten up while you're still in the fucking womb. Worse still, the pregnant woman figures out that the baby is somehow important to the crazy fucking bitch, so she tries to get the goth psycho to back off by holding a knitting needle to her own fucking distended belly. You read that fucking right. The fight in the kitchen ends with the pregnant woman using a lighter and can of fucking Pam to create a fucking flamethrower that burns the goth psycho fucking bitch's face clean off.

It's not fucking over, though, as the fight has damaged the pregnant woman's windpipe, and she can't fucking breathe. Her solution? An emergency fucking tracheotomy, performed with a fucking knitting needle. I want to stress that this is the worst fucking emergency tracheotomy I've ever seen in a film. She pushes a blunt knitting needle into her neck, and blood comes flying out. Apparently this lets her fucking breathe, and doesn't cause her lungs to fill up with blood, since she doesn't put a fucking straw in her throat or anything to allow air to cleanly fucking move in and out of her lungs. No, she's breathing through a ragged, bloody fucking hole in her neck, that she quickly covers up with fucking duct tape. 'Cause that's all you fucking need. I want to fucking reiterate this just to be fucking clear: she shoves a blunt fucking knitting needle into her throat, somehow missing all the muscles and veins in there, and manages to pierce the windpipe with this entirely blunt fucking tool, and then, with no outside assistance of any kind, is suddenly able to breathe through the hole.

Then the fucking pregnant woman climbs to her feet, builds a fucking spear, and goes looking for the psycho fucking goth bitch. Finding her curled up in a corner, the pregnant woman finally discovers her fucking motive. It turns out that four months ago, in the crash where pregnant woman's husband was killed, the car they crashed into was being driven by the nine-months-pregnant crazy fucking bitch, and the crash fucking killed her crazy fucking baby. So now she wants pregnant woman's baby to take its place. So here's the twenty-five fucking thousand question: Why didn't she wait until after the baby was born and steal it then, like every other baby thief on the entire history of the entire fucking planet? Good fucking question. Too bad the filmmakers don't have a fucking answer for you, beyond 'then we wouldn't have our ending.' What the fuck is that ending, that it justifies all of this, you may ask? Well, hold on, because I'm not fucking done telling you about the previous fucking scene.

So, after finding out the crazy fucking bitch's motive, what does the pregnant lady do? I'll tell you what she doesn't fucking do. She doesn't finish her off with the fucking spear she built. No, she just takes the crazy goth fucking bitch's picture a bunch of times. Because she's a fucking photographer. You know what would have made a more compelling fucking picture than that? A picture of the crazy fucking bitch with a fucking spear sticking out of her head. Don't for a fucking second try to tell me she doesn't have it in her to fucking kill someone, either. Once you've lit someone's face on fucking fire with a can of Pam and a lighter you've crossed a fucking line. Running them through with a fucking spear is a fucking cakewalk after that.

Just then the lights come back on. Turns out the cop, who got shot in the fucking head need I remind you, isn't quite fucking dead yet, and managed to turn the lights back on. This puzzles the pregnant lady, who doesn't know what to make of the way the fucking cop sways back and forth in a daze, or of the fucking bullet hole in his head. The pregnant woman doesn't pick up a fucking phone and call for fucking help, though, she just walks over to the cop, which upsets him. You see, his brain injury has turned him into a violent fucking retard, so he takes out his nightstick and hits the pregnant woman in the stomach until her fucking baby is dead.

Let me just pause and reiterate for a fucking second: FUCK THIS FUCKING MOVIE.

This action pisses off the crazy fucking psycho goth bitch, who uses the spear to stab the cop to fucking death. Then she knocks the pregnant woman down and uses a pair of scissors to cut the fucking dead baby out of her fucking womb. And that's the fucking end of the movie. The fucking crazy fucking goth fucking bitch wraps the dead baby up in a cloth and sits down in a rocking chair to await her imminent fucking death from her massive fucking injuries.

The Fucking End.

That's fucking unpleasant right? Ex-fucking-actly. It only exists because it's fucking unpleasant. The film thinks it's fucking art because it succeeds in being fucking unpleasant, as if that isn't the easiest fucking thing in the world to do. The filmmakers don't seem to realize that the only fucking things keeping every film from being this unpleasant are film censorship organizations and basic fucking human decency. It's hard to tell people a good story, but because most films aren't made in France, where apparently anything fucking goes, filmmakers are forced to try to involve their fucking audience in stories and characters. If you're showing people cutting the babies out of womens uteri (see also, The fucking Lost) then you've officially thrown out all pretense of actually trying to tell a coherent story, because you'd have to be William fucking Shakespeare to be able to write a movie where a baby being fucking cut out of a uterus was the logical fucking end point. Come to think of it, that might actually be how Titus Fucking Andronicus wraps up. You're not fucking Shakespeare, though, so I can only assume that instead of actually putting in the effort, you've just given yourself over to randomly attempting to fucking disgust anyone unlucky enough to watch your fucking movie, because you get some kind of visceral thrill from knowing that you managed to create that reaction in someone. Well, I'm fucking disgusted. Mission fucking accomplished. My question is, why did you waste seventy-five minutes of my fucking time working up to disgusting me? It's not that fucking hard. Turn on the fucking camera, point it at yourself, tell me your only goal in life is to disgust me, and then fucking cut your own stomach out on film. It would be every bit as disgusting and considerably fucking better then your awful fucking film in three important ways: A: It's ninety seconds, tops. B: You won't be around to make any more disgusting fucking films. 3: The plot and characterization would at least make a lick of fucking sense.

If anyone out there wants to tell me that I should just ignore the problems with the fucking film and suspend my fucking disbelief because it's just a fucking movie, let me tell you something: the definition of suspension of disbelief is that a member of the audience is expected to accept a single preposterous contrivance or coincidence to kick off the plot. Cary Grant goes to the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time and everyone winds up thinking he's George fucking Kaplan. Everything that follows is the logical and sensible result of that one coincidence, and so we can suspend our disbelief about that huge fucking coincidence. Janet Leigh steals money, and while on the run winds up staying at the motel of a twisted serial killer. It's a huge fucking contrivance, but it gets the plot going and everything afterwards makes sense, so we don't fucking question it. In a well-written film, everything that happens after that first unbelievable thing has to be the logical extension of that single thing, with characters acting believably according to their personalities and the situations they find themselves in. If you need another coincidence, or another contrivance, or the fucking hand of God to swoop down and detonate the nuclear fucking bomb that Matt Frewer drove to Vegas on an ATV, you've written a Bad Fucking Movie. This movie got one fucking coincidence: that two pregnant women drove cars into each other. That's fucking it. Every stupid fucking thing a character does afterwards is awful fucking writing.

Do I object to all the fucking gore? Apparently fucking so. But more than that, I object to this film's utter idiocy and failure in every fucking criteria by which films are fucking judged. If the only thing you can point to in your fucking film that separates it from all the other fucking films out there is that you've got the most objectionable fucking gore, then you have fucking failed.

You are fucking failures.

P. Fucking S. - To everyone who gave this fucking horrible film a good review, I bear you not a fucking stitch of ill-will, even though the cumulative effect of those reviews was to convince me to watch this fucking abomination. I don't hold it against you – reviewing films is your job (or at least dedicated interest), and you're entitled to your opinion. It's just that in this case it's fucking wrong. Deeply fucking wrong.

37 comments:

r.▵. m○n○-ϟy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Heath said...

Thank GOD I found a review that doesn't fucking rave about how "brilliant" or "amazing" this movie is. I was so excited to see this movie, but it turned out to be such bullshit. Seriously, had this been an American movie, it would've tanked and no one would've given a shit.

The entire movie, I kept waiting for the moment where there would be some twist or something that elevates it beyond being just a typical slasher flick with more-than-typical gore.

The scene that finally did it for me was when the cop rushes into the house after hearing gunfire, and DRAGS ALONG THE YOUNG SUSPECT IN HANDCUFFS. Then- THEN!!! he gives the guy either a gun or a stun gun to protect himself, without taking off his fucking handcuffs. Had this scene been even slightly self-conscious or tongue-in-cheek, it would've been hilarious. But no, I'm supposed to accept this as totally logical police procedure.

Why the fuck is everyone going on about how great this is? Did we see the same movie?

And yes, for the record, this movie DID offend me. I can handle gore and violence if there's a reason for it... but an entire shitty, amateurish script written JUST so we can have an excuse to show a dead baby getting cut out of his mother.. that's offensive to me.

I agree with you. Fuck the people that made this.

r.▵. m○n○-ϟy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I may have been able to take your comments seriously, but all the use of 'fuck' was neither funny nor helpful. It doesn't drive your point home harder by using fuck over and over again. And recording yourself reading your diatribe aloud doesn't do anything for it either. It's fine that you were offended by the film. I think it's great that you decided to write something about it. But come on, did you honestly think all that profanity did anything other than make you come off like some sort of juvenile with a blog at their disposal? Please.

Andrew K said...

Just an fyi: the baby wasn't dead at the end. You hear it crying as "crazy goth chick" takes it away while the camera pans over the dead mom's remains.

For someone who violently attacks all the details of a movie, you'd think you would have caught that.

Rhubarb said...

There have been several real cases of fetus snatching.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6990419.stm

That probably makes the film worse as this is a serious subject that deserves a better filmic treatment. Judging by the interview with the directors at Twitch, they're not exactly respectful towards women.

From that and the clips I've seen online , I'll probably agree with your opinion of this movie, although your review is so angry it makes me more, not less, interested in seeing it. Horror films are not excused from needing decent plotting. However I agree with everyone, your overuse of profanity made your review fucking hard to read.

Vardulon said...

In case you were wondering, yes, I was being paid by the F-word. By whom, you may ask? Why, the International Council on Profanity. They've been very good about giving grants to people for swearing on the internet. Normally I wouldn't be down with that sort of thing, but alas, my dog needed surgery, so I shoehorned in three-hundred odd swears into what was, originally, a fairly sedate review of an abhorrent film.

As for my reference to the baby being dead, yes, I heard the crying, but I assumed that it was just a delusion inside the crazy woman's head - the way everything that happens after the baby-cutting seems like a fantasy, especially the beautiful lighting on the chair she reposes in with her stolen dead baby.

And for the record - yes, the remake of "April Fool's Day" was a worse film, I just didn't hate it like I hated Inside.

mrm1138 said...

I'm absolutely with you on this review. After all the hype I'd read about this movie, I expected something at least as good as Them (Ils) or the first two-thirds of High Tension (or however long it was before the mind-numbingly awful plot twist reared its ugly head). The first 20 minutes or so actually worked for me, and I held out hope throughout most of the movie that it would get better, but by the time we were asked to accept that the main character could find everything necessary to set someone on fire, give herself an emergency tracheotomy and construct a crude spear all within a five-foot radius around her, I pretty much threw in the towel. (And if I hadn't, I'm sure the zombie cop would have done it.) Honestly, I think that, for a lot of people, the attempted tastelessness of the movie (i.e., that it directs violence against a pregnant woman and contains a shit-ton of graphic gore) is enough for a lot of jaded horror fans. I prefer my horror to have some logic to it.

K.Nitsua said...

I agree with your review of the "stupidity" on the part of the characters - but I still liked this movie, alot.

I'm not into gore in movies just to have gore, I do like my movies to have a plot. And whether you like it or not, this movie did have a plot. Granted it was filled with holes that were taped up with idiotic moves by some pretty dumb characters - and even though throughout the movie I was like "I would've done this... I would've done that...", I didn't sway enough with those thoughts to question the writers' motives. The characters were developed in a sense they didn't need much development besides Sarah. And we saw how her character was: I don't give a fuck type of attitude. It was xmas eve and she just wanted to be alone, that was apparent too.

As far as the screaming, or lack there of, goes... who are we to say we wouldn't do the same in her position. Fucking bitch put a scissor through my hand and nailed me to the wall - I wouldn't want to do anything that would upset her anymore.

I am still looking for a movie that would scare the shit out of me tastefully. So I would totally like to hear your suggestions.

Ieda said...

Thank God, a negative review!

I couldn't even finish watching the movie - and I ALWAYS finish them. Reading your review, I'm glad I didn't.

It was not only stupid, but almost amateurish with those crappy sound effects whenever the psycho cut the boss on the stairs or the gimmicky editing effect with flashy lights of her smoking a cigarette sitting in the hallway just to show how mentally disturbed she is. All very poorly done.

And so what if it has tons of blood? I love blood and even so I was bored to death with that opening.

It's like they tried too hard to make a serious gore but didn't want to make a serious effort.

You just can't make a movie about a pregnant woman in danger without being compared with Rosemary's Baby - which is truly terrifying, even with practically no blood whatsoever.

Savvy0ne01 said...

Clap, clap, clap.... I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that someone other than myself thought this movie was anything more than tripe. Although, your repeated use of "fuck" was somewhat mindnumbing. I can say I was extremely excited to watch this film after all the extensive praise this movie was given, then I actually watched it. For a movie that had potential it seems like they took the easy route and just threw extreme gore in my face rather than contriving a moderately logical scenario. I found myself hard-pressed not to laugh during most of this movie. I think one of my favorite parts of this movie was when the guy got scissored in the sack and a soda fountain of blood erupted from his crotch. Or better yet when the zombie clubbed the woman in her stomach and pre-chilled jello gushes out of her woman parts. Pure comedic gold, I've never laughed so hard. The movie started off well enough and even had a couple of creepy scenes, but that quickly digressed into mundane gore. I'm all for a slasher flick when it doesn't pretend to be anything more than that, but when its proclaimed as something more that's when I start to have a problem.

Vardulon said...

Not every review, my good sir, just the ones that were positive. That's not the kind of misinformation that should be going out there unanswered.

Anonymous said...

I watched this movie today evening and have mixed feelings about it. While on the one hand, it maintains an exceedingly creepy atmostphere, the plot-holes and excessive (and may I add, unnecessary) gore essentially undid all the good work. If that wasnt enough, I couldnt help feeling betrayed with the zombie twist.

It is difficult to believe that the directors who put so much emphasis on building up the atmostphere with dim lighting and a haunting score would let so many plot-holes creep into the script. The over-the-top gore used as a tool to perturb the viewer only served to degrade the genuine horror which Inside had built up so effectively. The zombie cop didnt help either.

Despite all these fallacies the dark imagery still haunts me. The final brutality was truly horrifying (and yet convincing - because it wasnt openly shown as the others). Perhaps the rave reviews it has been getting is because of the brilliant creepy ambience that permeates throughout it. Inside is genuinely scary if you ignore the plotholes and some of the nonsensical gore; unfortunately, you would have a difficult time doing so.

This would have been a classic in horror; if only someone had paid attention to the script on par with the lighting and the effects.

My $0.02..

Anonymous said...

maybe you could consider that its *your* review that's bullshit, and not the others?

Anonymous said...

I think most people are going to judge their opinions on professional reviews, not profanity-laden blogger desperate for attention.

Anonymous said...

Mmmmhmmm.

This blog pretty much just commented itself. There's a reason why the makers of Inside made one of the best movies to come out in years, and you sit on a blog cursing like an 8th grader about every thing you didn't like about this movie.

I hear they're coming out with a Disaster Movie, you might like that one more, Mr. Vardulon.

We have morons like you to thank for movies like that.

Vardulon said...

So, by your logic, "Anonymous", the complaints that I had about the film's logic and characters are undermined by the fact that, to illustrate my point, I used the socially transgressive rhetorical device of 'excessive swearing'.

To follow your reasoning, does that mean that the film is undermined because it made its point by adopting the socially transgressive device of 'hypergore'?

Seriously, though, if you think this was one of the best films in years, then you have terrible taste in movies. Like Friedberg and Seltzer bad.

Anonymous said...

Vardulon most of your arguments and objections quite frankly suck.

The police send 3 officers to the house who thoroughly investigate inside and out. They further send a night patrol of 3 more afterwards to check up on her. There is a RACE RIOT going on. Think of the LA riots. Think you'd have been able to get 6 officers come check up on you on you in 1 night on a 'suspected' harrassment? Domestic violence cases don't get that much manpower.

The lamp. She smashed her in the head with the lamp. You say she should continue to smash her in the head. With what?! THE LAMP IS BROKEN. Or maybe a women 9 months pregnant should get into a wrestling match to subdue a bigger, psychotic woman carrying a pair of crazy, big ass scissors who just tried to open up her belly... all the while having been awake for all of what 2 seconds... her actions make it clear that she would have lasted much longer in the movie than you would have.

The girl's boss coming into the house assumed the killer was the girl's mother. Who else would it be? A crazy psychopath in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood? It would have been stupider for the writers to make this guy just assume she was trying to kill her. The mother did confront the two but why would she call the police before trying to find her daughter? The only people who immediately assume a strange person in a house is a psychopathic killer are people who watch too many horror movies.

You see a lot of shots of the house from the outside and it does not look like a 'tiny French house'. It looks quite big enough to not be able to hear conversations (in whispered tones mind you... the killer tells her boss the woman is sleeping). The girl in the bathroom doesn't know her boss is their or else of course she would scream. As for the girl grabbing a weapon, phone, running out etc... she needs to leave the washroom to do that. How could she know the woman even went downstairs? For all she knows she is waiting for her behind the door.

As for the cops, they were at least astute enough to figure out that the killer couldn't have been the girl because she wasn't pregnant. And the girl doesn't scream because SHE DOESN'T KNOW THEY ARE THERE! The killer didn't even let the cops in the house the first time she talked to them. She screams after the cops come back because at that time she has a pair of scissors driven through her hand. Did you even watch the movie?!

Why the cop with the rioter doesn't call for backup when he hears shots? Beats the shit out of me. You have a point there. He is the stupidest cop in the world and it wouldn't have hurt the story for him to have simply called for backup and gone in anyway. But that is really the only piece of bad writing I saw in the film. The cop at the end in a 'daze' actually had 8-ball hemorrhaging from getting shot at point blank range in the head with a bean bag gun. Notice the black eyes? Did you see the gun? It was a bazooka. That wasn't firing live ammunition smartguy unless it was a fucking rocket launcher. They were at a riot remember?

The killer didn't wait until the baby was born to take it because 1) she couldn't steal it from the hospital, they have security for shit like that remember?, 2) She hates the girl for 'killing' her baby and wanted the girl dead and 3) She is clearly fucking nuts. Waiting for the woman to give birth and then stealing the baby from the house afterwards sounds pretty rational given she is a psychopath. It also would have made for a boring ass movie but if that's what you would have rather seen than to each his own. I hate stupid fucking arguments like yours because they destroy the entertainment value of the film. I mean, why did Michael Myers bother stalking anyone in Halloween? Why not steal a shotgun, wait till Laurie Stroud was asleep and then shoot her in the fucking head while she was sleeping? Movie would have taken 5 fucking minutes. Pretty exciting movie. Hey Vardulon make your 'Realistic As Shit' Horror Movie Of The Year. I'm sure 2 people including your mother would go to see it.

Vardulon said...

Take a look at the house again - the stairwell opening starts about five feet down from the bathroom door, and that stairwell opening is directly above the front door (as seen in the artistic 'don't you get it? She thinks she's safe inside, but she's really trapped!' shots at the beginning). In an otherwise completely quiet house, there's no way you couldn't hear someone knocking on the door. Could she hear the conversation in the living room? Maybe not, but the conversation started at the stairwell. The conversation between mother and boss also happened at the stairwell.

Seriously? You're saying that if you showed up at your child's house, and there were two strangers there, one of whom was pretending to be you, the first call you make isn't to the police? Whether she's a murderer or not, she's lying and trespassing. I'm not saying you can't have the mother show up and get killed, but the way they did it is unbelievably stupid.

Wait, what was your explanation for her not hearing her mother calling her name while standing five feet away? Did you not have one? Huge surprise.

It's clear that you liked the movie - that's fine, if you're someone who can overlook huge flaws in logic when watching a movie, more power to you. I'm sure you get much more enjoyment out of films than those of us who enjoy coherence.

But even someone with such low standards has to be able to see that the cops were a drop-in by the filmmakers to extend the story from about forty-five minutes up to (nearly) feature length, and that, even then, they were handled about as poorly as they could have been.

As for the Caesarian kidnapping, if you were looking to defend the plot choice, then 'because she's just nuts' isn't a very good defense, since most of her activities are based on careful planning, quick thinking (and bad writing). Obviously it's easier to steal a baby after the mother comes home from the hospital. A better explanation (that fits the character psychologically), is that the crazy woman wanted to possess the baby completely, and if she waited until the baby was born, that baby would 'belong' to the girl, and could never be hers completely.

Next time you're defending a movie, put a little more thought into your arguments.

So your other argument is that it's more likely that a beanbag gun fired point-blank into someone's head is more likely to turn them into a murderous zombie than a gunshot? Razor-sharp, that reasoning. And why did she use a beanbag gun when she still had a perfectly good pistol? As for why I couldn't see it clearly, there's like three shots in the movie that you can see clearly, and that wasn't one of them.

And for the record, Michael Meyers doesn't use a gun because, mentally, he's so completely out of whack that it's possible he doesn't even understand what a gun is - mentally he's still a child, as evidenced by the way he 'plays' with his victims. For him, it's not about practicality or expedience, it's about the game. That's the kind of information you can get about a character in a well-made movie.

Anonymous said...

Wait, what was your explanation for her not hearing her mother calling her name while standing five feet away?

Maybe she was scared? Maybe she just wasn't paying attention? Maybe through all the shit she had been going through over the course of one night, her head just wasn't in the right place. Can you honestly say that you haven't heard someone calling your name before?

Seriously? You're saying that if you showed up at your child's house, and there were two strangers there, one of whom was pretending to be you, the first call you make isn't to the police?

No, the first thing you do, phone call or otherwise, is see if your nine months pregnant child is ok.

I agree with almost all of your points completely, though they didn't prevent me from loving this film and hailing it as one of the best horror movies of recent memory. A plot hole is only a plot hole when there is no seemingly valid reason for it to occur otherwise. Who are we to say we would do anything differently? Alas, I am not a pregnant woman, so I must not judge. I would have screamed, though.

Out of all the plot holes, however, the one that just annoyed the fuck out of me was the cop at the end getting up and smacking the everloving shit out of Sarah's belly. That was just kinda stupid, and I saw it as a means to set up the impromptu C-Section at the end.

Your refusal to bend on this makes me want to ask you to write for my horror blog. It's great to see someone disagree with the mainstream.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely too right. I like Beátrice Dalle and the notion of her playing a relentless psycho was appealing to me, but this movie was just ridiculous. Let's be honest, here: the entire premise of the film, the whole reason it was made, was the scissor scene. Everything else in the film existed solely to bring us this scene. Every plot twist was contrived to make sure we saw an impromptu c-section with a pair of scissors in the end.

I'm sick to death of people going on about how this movie is some kind of great artistic statement. Bullshit. It was a plain old splatter film, pure and simple, and even more illogical than is typical for the genre.

For those of you who liked it, whatever, more power to you. Just don't try to convince me it was art, or that it was even a particularly coherent picture.

Anonymous said...

Thank You for this SORELY NEEDED opposing view.

Thank you also for "spamming" positive review sites with it too. I only wish you had seen it during it's festival circuit run (which is when I decided I needed to see it). I guess it's my fault for not following up, though I usually expect festival goers to be proper cinephiles and give a reasonably objective view... obviously that's not the case here.

Just about all your points are very valid and anyone trying to justify an argument against some of them is basically... a fanboy. The movie has far too many moments of convienence (Duct Tape on the counter in the kitchen... of a womans home?!.. what was the pole too? looked like a auto-jack lever.. and that's just 20 seconds of the 82 minutes). All these moments of convienence and contrivance can not be explained away. the sheer quantity of issues point to the bigger picture that it was terribly written.

I, in no way experienced anything watching this film outside of GROSS disappointment. The gore is fine. I'm not a fan of gore and this isn't the worst I've seen. It's in no way scary at all. The camera shots with the scissors were really tacky. Just the big scissor thing in general is tacky. Very 1980's. The identity of the killer was 1 of 2 things (either the pregnant girl was seeing this all in her head (since she was more a bitch than a depressed "widower") or it was one of the people in the other car. I'm sorry, but it really was fairly obvious. In fact, the voice at the beginning totally gives it away but I didn't give it much thought since the audio mix was really weak so I just chalked it up as a bad overdub. It was also obvious at one point scissors were going to cut into that belly. So the effect was lost. Squandered by all this foreshadowing with all the stupid shots of the stupid scissors. Killer jams scissors here, killer lets go of scissors... close up of scissors, killer decides to grab scissors again. WTF is that?

I went to great lengths to see this movie to the point of having to import it from the US as no video rental or video retail stores in Ontario (that I could find) had it. Miraculosly(sp?), Amazon just happened to have it on sale for just under $6 when I finally got around to ordering it.

Thank God.

I was willing to pay $30 based on the strength of the reviews alone.

But having seen this really pathetic excuse for a film I am getting something positive out of it, and it's that horror movie fans can be complete idiots when it comes to their opinionson what a good film is. I need something objective. If you're a gore fan, and that's just your thing.. then tell me, so I can determine that ME <> GoreFan and therefore GoreFan's opinion is useless to me. Thats the only thing this movie had going for it and all the blood in the world with one of the best Directors in the world (See - Dead Alive) does not make a good film, or good cinema.

This reminds me of the screening of a work print of Hostel... the movie ends, and the audience is cheering, meanwhile I'm thinking "WTF are you monkeys cheering about? That it's over?"

You want to see a good horror film. Good French, or otherwise?

Martyrs.

(and don't start on the crap that it's torture porn. It isn't. There's nothing sadistic in the film and you don't have to make up ANY excuses for ANY characters actions. It all makes sense, it's all very plausible, realistic even. Every aspect of the film is solid, from the acting, the direction, the set design/art direction, the sound, cinematography and the writing).

Ultimately can we do something about defining some sort of code of conduct for film reviews. I mean, there are movies I enjoy that are weak films (Guilty Pleasure) and then there are films I do not like, but I recognize are good films.

It's easy to not like Martyrs, but you have to acknowledge it's a good film. It's well crafted. But with L'interieur (Inside), not only do I not like it, it's not even remotely a good film.

These guys don't even know where to place the camera. The sound effects were poor. It would have been more shocking/effective without them. There's only one good shot in the whole movie and that's the killer standing outside in the rain at the door, lighting her cigarette. That's it.

BTW, that house was small.. we're talking 1 (maybe 2 bedrooms). The door is at the base of the stairs, I think the whole place was hardwood... sound would travel to the bathroom, easily. Even muffled talking would have been heard. The filmmakers didn't care. They had a big name french actress and some good makeup people and that was enough for them.... not for me.

Anonymous said...

No, he can't be anymore. He never was. You, on the other hand...

Anonymous said...

Many comments have been made regarding inside and Martyrs criticizing their treatment of women.
What I find interesting is the fact that many people including this blogger refer to the women as bitches. People that start analyzing details about the house, the scar, etc. are lucky. We are all lucky to have time to waste talking about a movie. I loved this film. Seriously, if you look at the bottom of the DVD box in minute letters just below the ratings there is a line that reads; Warning the Following film contains Plot Holes Bitches and CGI babies. Take the time to read these comments and you might save yourself 90 minutes. If the filmmaker wanted a reaction he succeed. He got 90 minutes of your life you will never get back. All you had to do was hit the eject button and put those bitches to rest

Anonymous said...

I just read the first few paragraphs and got bored. I liked the movie; it wasn't perfect, but it did what I wanted it to do. However, if I didn't like it after awhile, I would have just shut it off. Just like I didn't read the rest of your review.

Vardulon said...

Anon-

I'm sorry to hear you liked the film, but at least we can agree on one thing - the importance of going to the internet and telling strangers that you didn't like a thing. I don't particularly care if it's the film or my review you're not fond of, so long as we're all on the webternet together, complaining about something, I'm happy.

cameron said...

on the one hand, it's refreshing to read a review that doesn't fawn over the violence and gore, and tout this as the greatest horror movie ever. on the other hand, i have great difficulty respecting the intelligence of someone whose every fifth word is 'fuck'. i understand the points you make, and i'm inclined to agree with them...or at least the ones i had the patience to pick out from the pissy little teenage tantrum you were throwing...; but seriously, is this how you normally communicate your opinions? did you run out of your prescribed medication before posting this? --you've a halfway decent review here, with some valid observations and criticisms; why ruin it by writing it in the language of a bitchy half-literate club girl?

Vardulon said...

Cameron - First off, thanks for using a name. All the anons can get a little confusing after a while.

As for your question, it's kind of funny that you would ask, since there's like two hundred other articles on this site that could answer it for you, but since you did ask...

I think swearing shows up in like 5-10 of the other articles (so, 2-5% of the total), and then only when I'm really annoyed at something. Hell, I've written like fifty thousand words about Indiana Jones 4, a movie I hated far more than this one, without swearing at all. Unless you count 'hell' or 'moron'. In which case I'm basically a longshoreman when it comes to language.

So why all the swearing? I kind of addressed this in an earlier comment, but I suppose I could have been clearer, so here goes-

The swearing's there for two reasons. The first is that, yes, I was very pissed off at the movie, and since I never sear at all, thought it would be funny to write a swear-tastic review.

The other reason is that I was trying to make a rhetorical point about the film's content. Basically my argument about the film was that featuring non-stop gore doesn't improve a horror film simply by virtue of its inclusion, and I was pointing this out by demonstrating that swearing doesn't make an argument more valid by its inclusion, either.

The pervasive swearing was meant to parallel the film's pervasive gore, making the point that an objectionable thing, repeated ad nauseam, loses any impact it might have had in the first place, rendering its inclusion pointless.

This is also why I recorded the audio version, in the hopes of demonstrating that by the end of the article, the swearing is just background noise.

Sure, it's by no means a revelatory point, but give the film's over-reliance on revolting imagery to cover its countless other flaws, I thought it was a relevant one to make.

Vardulon said...

'swear at all'. Yikes, that should teach me not to proof read. As if anything could at this point.

nyko66 said...

I swear I love blood and gore, but every point you made was absolutely right. The French have managed to out-gore Americans and they even cast great actors, but the plot holes in this film were ridiculous.

The woman didn't even scream when she was being cut open for God's sake! She never screamed, when the cops realized they weren't talking to a pregnant woman at the door is when they should have called for back-up and definitely when shots were fired-any T.V. show would tell you that.

I really liked the acting in 'High Tension' also, but many scenes made no sense at all. What was the point of the 'Killer' giving himself a blowjob with some woman's head when said 'Killer' was in the house the whole fucking time, and where did the truck the 'Killer' drove to the remote house she'd never visited before come from?

Maybe I'm just older now, but it's really hard to enjoy my gore when there's no sense to it. The French as it turns out aren't all that-lol.

Dean Rossetti, CFP®, ChFC® said...

It's called "satire" people. The content is long and disjointed (like the plot of the movie). The obscenities are frequent and superfluous (like the gore in the movie). Additionally, it seems to leave many of you unsatisfied (like...gasp...the end of the movie!)

I get it. Great review.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with your review. The only part of the movie that wasn´t disgusting was the beginning.

MysticalWalrus said...

Heya there Jack. I'm sure that the Count can defend himself perfectly well, but seeing how this has gone unresponded, I feel the need to interject.

"No no... Fuck YOU! This open letter is idiotic, and so are you..."

It's worth noting that if one is going to open a comment with ad-hominem attacks, it is a good idea to provide substance to those attacks later on, in order to avoid looking like an idiot. Vardulon did this. You didn't. At the very least, this whole comment feels extremely knee-jerk. Think about things before you type them, 'kay?

"If you miss the point of a movie, fine, doesn't mean everyone else did..."

... Woah. Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you claiming that this film has a point, beyond vomiting as much gore at the audience as it can muster? Because if you have evidence for this, please do provide it. What was the point, or even aesop, of the film "Inside"?

"Better plot in this one than 99% of american horror"

To be fair, most American horror IS trash. However, I somehow doubt that that 99% is a legitimate statistic calculation. It is also worth noting that you didn't specify. Do you mean MODERN American horror?

If you don't, are you seriously suggesting that Inside has a better plot than Psycho? Halloween? Or, to cater to more modern sensibilities, Scream? Even Wrong Turn?

"and even though there are holes in it, it's easy to forgive when you think of the movie as a whole..."

No. No it isn't. Because this movie is just watching people getting maimed and murdered in rapid succession. There is no emotional connection, there is no reason to care about these characters. If the plot was airtight, the movie might be able to create some solid chills despite those flaws, but it isn't. So it doesn't. Therefore it has failed at it's purpose.

"You my friend has missed the point of this movie",

Still waiting to hear what that mystical "point" was...

"but thanks for an enjoyable rant.. you fucking pussy
(See how cool it is to curse all the time? No, no it bloody well isn't!)"

I know that it's tedious to wade through the comment section, but the least you could do is search for Vardulon's name. It's pretty dang distinctive. He's already explained that he was using the swearing to make a rhetorical point, not because it was "cool".

WTFOMG said...

This movie...yeah....it made me want to cut my face off shove it down a toilet count to ten and play hide and go seek with my liver. Word simply cannot express how much I now want the french to die. And I only watched the first 15 minutes of the movie...at 11pm at night. I just...wtf? really? wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf W.T.F. was that? omg i want to cut my testicles off.

DIEfatangryblogger said...

Hey just wanted to stop by and say you're a douchebag. Oh, and i hope you choke on your dad's cock.

Shelf Abuse said...

I love both films and film criticism, but after this film and, to a lesser extent, American Mary, I've come to realise that the horror buff/critic wants something entirely different from their horror movie than I do.

This film earned a lot of good will from me in its first twenty to thirty minutes, but the atmospheric first act descended into... emptiness, I guess. The "zombie" cop was ridiculous, the revelation predictable from the first scene, and the ending was so morally vacuous that it deemed the whole film pointless.

Martyrs was equally gruesome and unpleasant, but there was a brain and purpose behind its brutality. Inside squandered its brilliant premise.

Unknown said...

I guess I went in wanting a Black Christmas and got more of a Ginger Snaps sorta vibe.

The start of the movie set us up for something pretty chilling. I was genuinely ready for a sleepless night at one point. "Why am I watching this", I thought, "when I was traumatised by Super and Skyfall?"

And then the arterial fucking spray happened. You know what's not scary but is kind of hilarious? Arterial spray.

And so on, and so on. A cartoonish, ludicrous goofball movie that made me giggle out loud a few times.

I love splatstick movies like Braindead and Evil Dead 2 but I guess I wanted a horror and got a comedy.

I don't know how I feel about the film overall.