It's What's Inside (2024)

[BluBonnet]

‘It’s What’s Inside’ Review: Greg Jardin’s Mind-Expanding College Reunion Thriller Is A Cult In The Making

For some reason the films in the Midnight strand at this year’s Sundance Film Festival haven’t actually been screening at midnight. This is probably good news for Greg Jardin’s ingenious horror-thriller, which, while perfect for a late-night-crowd, has perhaps too much meat on it to digest past the witching hour. But its complexity is also its allure, and there’s so much going on beneath its many surfaces that it could conceivably become a bona fide cult hit. A Sundance launch is a mixed blessing when it comes to this, so it’s hard to say right now whether It’s What’s Inside has the crossover immediacy of a Blair Witch Project or the long-haul slow-burn of a Donnie Darko. Whichever way it turns out, this is first-class genre filmmaking and an impressive calling card for everyone involved.

It begins with what seem at first to be a misdirect, focusing on the floundering relationship between two college sweethearts, Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) and Cyrus (James Morosini). The spark has gone, but Shelby valiantly tries to get things going again by surprising Cyrus with a little light role-play and a fetching long blonde wig. Caught furiously browsing hardcore porn on his laptop, Cyrus tries to bluff his way out of the situation, but the damage is done.

The seriousness of the situation is defused somewhat by the upcoming nuptials of an old college friend, Reuben (Devon Terrell), who is marrying his fiancée, Sophia. In anticipation of that union — referred to as “Reuphia” in the style of “Bennifer” and “Brangelina” — Reuben has invited six of his old college pals to join him for his stag party. En route to the party, hosted in a gothic pile belonging to Reuben’s bohemian artist mother, Shelby flicks through the Instagram belonging to another alumnus, Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who has since reinvented herself as an influencer, dabbling in wellness, politics, and relationship advice. Nikki seems to have it all, and Shelby’s disdain for her is the first sign that the reunion will not go quite the way Reuben is hoping.

Rounding out the guests are Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), Brooke (Reina Hardesty) and Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), plus the bonus of a surprise appearance by the enigmatic Forbes (David W. Thompson), the black sheep of the group. True to form, Forbes did not RSVP to the invite and, more strikingly, doesn’t seem to be all that welcome anyway. However, Forbes has something special in his possession that will ensure that this will be a night to remember: a suitcase. What’s inside? The publicity team would prefer this review to preserve the mystery, so let’s see how that works out. Let’s just say it contains a parlor game, one that involves impersonation and roleplay in a way that, before too long, will take us back to the very beginning and shed new light on what’s really been going on with Cyrus and Shelby. Meanwhile, old allegiances are challenged, and, in a very real sense, people turn out not to be who they say they are.

Though there’s a sci-fi bent to the story, the suitcase is really a McGuffin; It’s What’s Inside is a horror-thriller about the human condition, the sort of film you might have the urge to make after dropping acid and watching a double bill of The Return of the Secaucus 7 and Suspiria (which, by the way, is very much a compliment). Jardin is a big presence as a director, a little over the top with his camera moves perhaps but hip in his music choices (The Walker Brothers’ “In My Room” and Bruno Nicolai’s theme from The Red Queen Kills Seven Times to name but two). It’s quite the thrill ride, and sometimes its ambition goes a little too far (assuming this festival print is Jardin’s final cut), but discerning audiences will roll with it and perhaps even go back for more.

Special mention must go here to the versatile cast, who make deceptively light work of a film that might so easily have been incomprehensible. There will, of course, be those who say it absolutely is the dictionary definition of incomprehensible, but if you like your brain to be whipped, tossed and scrambled rather than just lightly pan-fried, ignore them: this is the movie for you.

Title: It’s What’s Inside
Section: Sundance (Midnight)
Sales agent: CAA
Director/Screenwriter: Greg Jardin
Cast: Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Devon Terrell, Gavin Leatherwood, Nina Bloomgarden, Reina Hardesty, David W. Thompson
Running time: 1 hr 43 min

[BluBonnet]

‘It’s What’s Inside’ Review: Roleplay Games Spiral Out of Control In an Increasingly Hysterical Horror Comedy

Adding to cinema’s long list of hellish bachelor parties to which nobody in their right mind should accept an invitation, “It’s What’s Inside” gathers a large crowd of mostly estranged friends in a remote mansion where either no one can hear you scream, or no one much cares if they do. It’s an age-old setup for a body-countdown horror movie, and it’s to the credit of Greg Jardin‘s highly strung, busily plotted debut feature that it doesn’t unfold exactly as you’d expect. That’s down to a nifty high-concept premise — not wholly original, but more commonly used for purposes of comedy than horror — that the filmmakers are eager to keep a secret, which might be a challenge if this grabby, nasty Sundance Midnight premiere gathers the “Talk to Me”-level buzz it’s clearly targeting.

It begins, somewhat tellingly, with a failed exercise in roleplay. We open on Shelby (Brittany O’Grady), a cautious young woman, donning a wig and a vampish new persona in an attempt to get her her detached boyfriend Cyrus (James Morosini) to look at her differently — or, really, to look at her at all. Catching him instead mid-masturbation over laptop porn, she abandons the disguise, and they agree to defer a larger discussion about their sex life until later, after the weekend wedding celebrations of their friend Reuben (Devon Terrell). It’s not the first time in “It’s What’s Inside” that relationship fault lines will be exposed when characters casually adopt new identities, all in the interests of spicing things up; the film snuffles out the truths that emerge when everyone is masked, to steadily more hysterical effect.

Before the wedding comes a stag night of sorts, though with entertainment markedly different from the standard offering of strippers and lapdances. Shelby and Cyrus are among a small, unisex group of Reuben’s college pals summoned to his sprawling, creepy family manse for an evening of reminiscing and boozy horseplay away from the eyes of his fiancée Sophia (Aly Nordlie). It’s been eight years since graduation, and they haven’t all stayed as close as they might have done, though it’s a flaw of Jardin’s fairly diagrammatic script that it’s hard to imagine what might ever have bonded this rather random array of superficially drawn characters.

Among the guests are blonde glamazon Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who has built a vast online following as an influencer who mixes earnestly right-on activism with her acai-bowl snaps, and onetime golden boy Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), now a tattooed try-hard who doesn’t do much of anything. Brooke (Reina Hardesty) and Maya (Nina Bloomgarden) are also in the mix, albeit somewhat anonymously, but conversation swirls around an eighth, unconfirmed invitee: Forbes (David Thompson), a gawky misfit whom no one has seen since he dropped out of college in controversial circumstances, though rumor has it he’s remade himself as some manner of Silicon Valley mogul. Sure enough, he turns up late to the party, carrying a chip on his shoulder and a briefcase in his hand — inside, his latest technological development, a kind of mind-warp game that he’s eager to test on his estranged friends.

Collectively, they do what anyone in the movies does when an enigmatic, slightly chilly figure turns up promising to show them a new reality, and what nobody would do otherwise: They drink up and dive in. The first act of “It’s What’s Inside” may not bear close scrutiny, but Jardin is in a hurry to get to the frenetic debauchery of the second, where — without straying into spoilers — the characters’ hitherto wary defenses are very swiftly broken down, lines are crossed and perspectives traded. Shelby and Cyrus’s already fragile relationship, in particular, is put through a sharply exposing form of group therapy, in which hidden motivations and desires float rudely to the surface.

Jardin conducts all this neon-lit social anarchy with energy and aplomb, sparing neither his characters nor his audience the essential cruelty of the premise, though spiking proceedings with the kind of shrill, fizzily caricatured comedy that drove Halina Reijn’s comparably constructed horror “Bodies Bodies Bodies” in 2022. The results are coldly diverting, with the plot continually ratcheting itself into higher degrees of panic and surprise, though potential for a darker, harder psychological payoff is missed — largely because these characters are so thin, it’s hard to care much for their vulnerabilities or to keep track of their evolving personae. Stabs of social-media satire — targeting both Nikki’s do-gooder wellness brand and Reuben’s exhaustively hashtagged wedding plans — are amusing but easy, glossing over the deeper human weaknesses underpinning them.

Still, Jardin approaches this story rather as the smirking, meddling Forbes seemingly enters the party: as an agent of chaos, out to mix and mess things up for the sheer hell of it. On these terms, “It’s What’s Inside” registers as a pretty effective genre calling-card: gleamingly shot and spikily cut, brashly acted by actors accepting of their role as pretty pawns in an elaborate narrative game of strategy. Studios seeking a zesty stylist for a malleable horror script would do well to take his number, though one hopes future projects will tease out this debut’s flickering hints at more tortured, subversive human interests.

[BluBonnet]

Netflix buys it for $17m.

Netflix has just closed a deal in the $17 million range for worldwide rights to It’s What’s Inside, the thriller written and directed by Greg Jardin that has been one of the Sundance Film Festival’s buzziest titles. I’m told that Netflix will also give the film a theatrical window. It’s the second 8-figure deal of Sundance, after the Jesse Eisenberg-directed A Real Pain sold to Searchlight for $10 million.

A pre-wedding party descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend shows up with a mysterious suitcase. There are a lot of reveals in this one, and I ain’t giving up a single one. The pic is produced by Wiiliam Rosenfeld, Kate Andrews, Jason Baum, and Raul Domingo.

CAA Media Finance brokered the deal. The film bowed in the Midnight Section on January 19 at The Ray Theatre.

[rooboy78]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

Netflix buys it for $17m.

I always shudder when Netflix nabs a movie I was looking forward to because it means no physical release ever.

[mwynn]

Netflix is going to grab most of the Sundance movies, while the other studios sit on their hands.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by mwynn

Netflix is going to grab most of the Sundance movies, while the other studios sit on their hands.

Netflix can afford to spend generously. The only question is why Apple and Amazon aren't more interested in outbidding them.

[Walter Kafka]

The second contraction in the title bothers me.

[BluBonnet]

Coming to Netflix on Oct 4th

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJBNi0CjX5I

[d2cheer]

Ugh...no thanks.

[BluBonnet]

[HorrorBlu]

I kind of hated this. Everyone in it is so aggressively uninteresting, and the premise doesn't work when there is absolutely nothing distinguishable about any of the characters. It's just a boring wannabe mash-up of Talk To Me and Bodies Bodies Bodies, but with none of the talent behind or in front of the camera.

Skip it.

[lgon]

Originally Posted by HorrorBlu

I kind of hated this. Everyone in it is so aggressively uninteresting, and the premise doesn't work when there is absolutely nothing distinguishable about any of the characters. It's just a boring wannabe mash-up of Talk To Me and Bodies Bodies Bodies, but with none of the talent behind or in front of the camera.

Skip it.

I thought it was great. it's been a while I haven't seen a movie I want to put it on rewatch. I recommend.

[mwynn]

My goodness, the inability to write one of the characters as interesting sinks this movie.

[Dr. Phibes]

I thought this was okay by the end, but I paused it to pee at around the 45 minute mark and I said to myself "I wouldn't have paid $17 Million for that." The characters were both uninteresting and irritating at the same time. I wouldn't want to spend time in an elevator with these people, I've gotta spend a whole movie with these *******s? The scene in the car with the constant Instagram/TikTok crap gave me a headache and I almost bailed there. This could just be me, but I also found it very confusing trying to keep up with who was in who. Although I guess that could've been the point.

I thought it ended decently enough, I did enjoy the last 20-25 minutes more, so I didn't totally hate it, but I didn't like it very much overall.

[mwynn]

Originally Posted by Dr. Phibes

I thought this was okay by the end, but I paused it to pee at around the 45 minute mark and I said to myself "I wouldn't have paid $17 Million for that." The characters were both uninteresting and irritating at the same time. I wouldn't want to spend time in an elevator with these people, I've gotta spend a whole movie with these *******s? The scene in the car with the constant Instagram/TikTok crap gave me a headache and I almost bailed there. This could just be me, but I also found it very confusing trying to keep up with who was in who. Although I guess that could've been the point.

I thought it ended decently enough, I did enjoy the last 20-25 minutes more, so I didn't totally hate it, but I didn't like it very much overall.

A bunch of people that have it all, yet find ways to make themselves miserable by being boring people.

[Lacit170]

Originally Posted by rooboy78

I always shudder when Netflix nabs a movie I was looking forward to because it means no physical release ever.

i was just saying this!!! would love to grab this one for the collection

Originally Posted by HorrorBlu

I kind of hated this. Everyone in it is so aggressively uninteresting, and the premise doesn't work when there is absolutely nothing distinguishable about any of the characters. It's just a boring wannabe mash-up of Talk To Me and Bodies Bodies Bodies, but with none of the talent behind or in front of the camera.

Skip it.

wow, not just you but others in here. i couldnt disagree more. what a mind F trippy concept this was and though they did a great job with it.

i actually have a different complaint about the movie though, which is the ending. everything is cool and works right up until the

[Show spoiler]jail scene. The fact that the girlfriend did what she did. It was way over the top dramatic and way over the line for what happened…when she goes to visit her boyfriend in jail, I really though that it was Beatrice (the sister that was really Forbes the whole time)…so if it was Beatrice in the girlfriends body, that would have made sense with how she was acting and I could live with that ending. The girlfriend would be in the hot blonde girls body and lives life as her, the crazy sister is in the girlfriends body and boyfriends gets screwed in jail…that all works…

But that fact that she lets her boyfriend rot in jail because basically he cheated on her is over the top extreme. Not to mention that the proposal she made to him when the cops show up, she stays in blond girl, boyfriend goes into the black guy and they sail off into the sunset, she tricked and persuaded him to even do that! And the reasoning made sense TO DO IT. it was the only way to keep him out of jail and she was adamant about staying as the blond girl even before she knew he liked her and kissed her during the gmae. What the boyfriend did wasn’t even a big deal. So what, he liked the blond girl way back when, made out with her when they all switched bodies… ok, biig whoop, just break up with the boyfriend and you all move on with your lives. But no, they had to make it an over dramatic ending for something the boyfriend did that wasn’t a big deal. certainly not worth of going to jail for murder

[R0CK0X]

I loved it. Super confusing (in a fun way), and I loved the early setup of the red/blue/green filter on the drawings to use as a narrative device. I agree that the characters are sometimes hard to differentiate (except for the one who always says "bro" and the other one who always says "dude"), but I was fine with it.

Also, Netflix shooting the subtitles to the top of the screen whenever someone was shown with a polaroid on their chest (so you could always read it) was really helpful to those of us who always use subtitles.

[crutzulee]

Threw this on last night for family movie night not expecting much...

Everyone had a fun time... My son called the ending as soon as Forbes walked in the door but we still found the journey fun... it shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath with BODIES, BODIES, BODIES or TALK TO ME as it suffers greatly in comparison but as a fun little time waster free on NETFLIX, I'd recommend..