Inside



Not long ago, a pregnant Sarah Clarke was in a car accident, which resulted in the death of her husband and with her ending up partially deaf. Sarah is devastated by the loss of her husband, but still looking forward to the birth of their daughter. She’s set to be induced on Christmas Day, but the night before she’s supposed to go to the hospital, a strange lady shows up on her doorstep demanding to be let in. Instead, Sarah calls the police, who come out to check the surrounding area. Satisfied that no one is lurking around, the police leave and Sarah heads off to bed. But unfortunately the strange woman makes it inside the house and it quickly becomes apparent that she intends to get her hands on Sarah’s baby by any means necessary.



Inside is an American horror/thriller from 2016, and is a remake of the French horror film from 2008 of the same name. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the French version when I watched it a couple months ago. I mean, it was fine for the bloodbath that it was, but there were enough small annoyances throughout it that it also sort of ticked me off. So I was kind of curious how the “Americanization” was going to be. Admittedly, I didn’t have very high expectations on that front, because the quality of American remakes are kind of all over the place. Some are fine, and a rare few could be argued to be better, but the vast majority end up being rather “meh.” Inside ends up being both simultaneously too similar, and too different from the original, that it unsurprisingly falls into the latter category. But I was very surprised that it also seemed to at least try to address some of the many (many) issues I had with the original.


Wow, she made it to the bathroom without any blood. We’re off to a remarkably clean start.

With the exception of the ending, for the most part the story is pretty much a beat for beat copy of the original, but with a few changes. Things like Sarah’s friend coming to check on her, as opposed to her employer. Or just the small fact that Sarah lives in a neighborhood that’s currently still highly in development to explain why no neighbors seem to be concerned with all the screaming and gunshots. Mostly small things, to be sure, but I thought a lot of them actually helped make the movie make more sense and fixed some of the annoyances I had with the French film. For instance, Sarah’s partial deafness explains away some of the issues the original had with sound carrying, and being unable to recognize her mother’s voice. The flimsy original bathroom door? Replaced by a much sturdier wooden construct. The stupid police? Well… they’re actually still incredibly dumb (immensely, irritatingly so), but they also explain some of it away with one of the officers in this film being a rookie. But more importantly, once the rookie realizes that their quick little errand has gone to shit, she does the one thing that all the other officers in these two films failed to do: she calls for fucking backup! Hallelujah, I cried! At least one of these idiots isn’t a complete moron. Granted, she quickly follows up this singular act of competence with…er, about six acts of utter stupidity, but I’ll still give her brownie points for being the one officer out of five (five!) who at least attempted to follow procedure (and common sense). So good job on at least doing one thing right, rookie.

Of course, the movie then tanked most of the goodwill that it gained with me by adding all of these little changes by utterly borking the ending by over-explaining the plot and motivations of the killer and aiming for a rather embarrassing attempt at a “happy ending”. But I thought it was still nice seeing those small changes, because it told me I likely wasn’t the only one irritated by all those stupid inconsistencies from the original.


Yet it still had a stupid “fuse box” subplot, which was annoying.

The other big change from the original involves the two main characters. In the French version, Sara is clearly highly depressed by the death of her husband, to the point where she seems uninterested in the baby, and really just life in general. So most of her personality almost feels like an emotionless blob who spends most of her time in the film hiding in the bathroom until she’s been beaten up so much that she finally gathers enough gumption to try to escape at the end. I think the idea might have been to make her as bland as possible so the audience could project whatever they wanted on her. Kinda like how some video games give you a bland protagonist and let you customize it however you want.

The Sarah in the American version, however, is a bit more defined. Yeah, she’s still depressed about the death of her husband, but she also seems genuinely invested in her child’s upcoming birth and her own life. She also displays a lot more chutzpah than her French counterpart, making several attempts to escape and call for help, at one point actually managing to make it downstairs to call out for help when the police show up. So thanks to that she makes for a far more engaging protagonist.


Yes. Good girl. You made a weapon and brought it with you. I’m very proud.

Unfortunately, like the rest of the film, while the remake of Inside giveth, the remake of Inside also taketh away. Because while Sara ends up being a more interesting character, her antagonist, the creepy Gothic Stabby Stabby Lady ends up worse off. The French version is cunning and conniving, but also terrifyingly manic, often switching between the two sides on a dime. Which is partially what makes her so scary. The American version though? Well, she’s still a cunning and highly prepared little bitch to be sure, probably more so than the French one, in fact. But all that frantic crazy energy? It’s gone, replaced instead with a cold, ruthless, calculating side. Which can still be very creepy at times, but it also feels too measured, especially when you consider the rest of the film.

Oh, and she also ends up talking way, way too much. Part of the terror of the original film came from not knowing WTF this lady’s problem was or what she wanted. She was a woman of few words. Lots of angry screaming, maybe, but few words. This chick, though? Ask the right question and she’ll happily monologue for you without a second’s hesitation, which sucks most of the suspense right out of the film. So definitely a downgrade in villain.


Shush. Exactly. That’s what you needed to be doing!

And I don’t think it should come as a surprise that the remake tones the violence down significantly. Where the original seemed intent on coating every possible character and surface with as much blood as possible, the remake is content with cutting about 70% of the blood budget, so the crime scene clean-up crew probably had a much easier time with their job than their French counterparts. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t any violence or blood, because there’s still quite a bit of both and the movie is still plenty brutal, and the villain is still suitably ruthless without all the blood. It’s just that the original version is so bloody and brutal that cutting out anything was going to make this film naturally pale in comparison.



So yeah, the remake of Inside gets a solid “meh” from me. I was admittedly very happy to see that the film attempted to fix (or at least address) most of the glaring issues that really bothered me about the original. But by fixing most of those it also created its own share of issues, namely that cringe-y, cheesy ending that just screams “We need more action scenes! Add more action scenes!” that the film is really worse off for. So the movie ends up being a mixed bag, and the original ends up being superior, even though it has a lot of issues that still really bug me. Oh well. You can’t win them all, I suppose.

Inside is available on a variety of streaming services.

Inside is also available on DVD.

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