Pretty Good

From my favorite movies..

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Wow. I recently watched the candy coated Americanized Inside (2018) and I really liked it. It was only after seeing and reviewing it that I learned it had been a remake so I wanted to check this out. This made the 2018 film look like a comedy. I really love horror/thrillers and this is an awesome movie. This was much more sinister and much, much more gory. I can't wait to recommend it!

It's always fun when a particular sub genre falls at your lap that you love and here is mine: Home Invasion. Why does this area of horror get to me?Probably because at its very core this is something we all fear; something that could easily happen to anyone at any point. The notion of our security and comfort being invaded is an unsettling idea and one that horror plays beautifully on.And better yet it poses a very real question: if your safe haven was invaded, what would you do to save yourself and those you love...?Whilst there are plenty I could have chosen and plenty I've yet to see, I was drawn back to one of the most disturbing films I've seen. To say À l'intérieur is an harrowing experience is actually to undercut how intense this film really is.Synopsis: Pregnant Sarah is involved in a car accident that kills her husband, a few months later on Christmas Eve she prepares for the festivities and arrival of her child when there is a knock on the door. But the woman on the other side doesn't want help she wants something else and she'll go to whatever lengths to get it...The beginning prelude with the crash and then the quiet aftermath is the perfect build up, the quiet swell; the serenity (of sorts) feels off. You can tell something isn't quite right and then...It has to be said Béatrice Dalle as La Femme is fantastic! Her unnerving calmness as she goes about systematically intruding on Sarah's life is thoroughly disturbing; the chill that permeates her scenes are as atmospherically creepy as it gets. Yet although this begins with an Hitchcockian feel once Femme manages to get past those walls, the change is palatable.The scene I still struggle to watch happens early on but is probably one of the simplest scenes to affect the viewer. Sarah in bed, Femme over her, the blade against her pregnant stomach... for anyone who is or as been this is an untimely reminder of how vulnerable we can be.The score by François-Eudes Chanfrault is outstanding, it sets a trembling beat that moves at a steady relentless pace adding tension at precisely the right points. The gore is shed in droves, it doesn't shy away from the bloodshed so if you're a gore hound this will easily suffice.And the ending... whilst this film is, in my opinion, the definition of an excellent home invasion it's the final that seals it. I'm a fan of both the happy ever after and the bleak yet for this it's the depressing nature that leaves an uncomfortable, unpleasant impression on the viewer. And makes this a film deserving of such status. If you have yet to see it, do so, this is horror simply put, at its finest.

Inside (À l'intérieur) is a 2007 French home invasion slasher film, developed by Alexandre Bustillo and directed by himself alongside Julien Maury. It concerns the attack and home invasion of a young pregnant woman by a mysterious stranger who seeks to take her unborn baby. (Information taken from Wikipedia)This movie could have been anything it wanted. It had potential for that. It could have been a nice psychological home invasion thriller with tension at its highest, or a disturbingly gory flick with enough shock value to give you nightmares for a month. The film tries to create an effective mix of both, but ends up making a considerable mess.Throughout the film, it is made clear that the filmmakers were given little money to work with; the CGI shots of the baby in utero are laughably bad and cut short the building tension on the scenes it appears on, while the practical effects used to create a horrifically violent shot of a pregnant woman being cut open with scissors are not that all convincing, nor shocking enough to make you cringe rather than go "oh, come on!".The overall concept is pretty great and original (there's something frightening and disturbing about a psychotic woman who breaks into a pregnant woman's house with the intentions of slicing her open and taking her baby), but its muddy execution effectively turns it into a gory mess that is as cliché as it gets.On the other hand, the film does have its cringe-worthy and edge-of-your-seat moments. The first half hour of the movie gets pretty intense and launches the overall tension into the stratosphere, and most of that is because of the acting. Alysson Paradis and Beátrice Dalle put on a show in front of the camera. You can almost feel the exact same pain and fear Sarah (Paradis) is feeling while locking herself in a neatly white (just imagine when blood begins splattering onto those walls) bathroom, as well as the sadness and desperation felt by the mysterious woman (Dalle) when we figure out her motives halfway through the film. The music, while not great, is innovative, experimental and helps bring those feelings to life.The gore, while mostly gratuitous and highly overwhelming, does also have its moments. Psycho woman's attack on Sarah's boss, for instance, is pretty well done; from the small clues he gets of the mysterious woman's lie about being Sarah's mother, to the point where Sarah's mother actually appears, the scene tends to effectively build on tension, until everything explodes in nice, juicy, red blood (and a free castration).The scene that really got on my nerves, though, was the very first sequence of the mysterious woman tormenting Sarah from outside her window, up to the point where she finally gets into the house and takes her time to bathe a pair of scissors in alcohol before jamming it into Sarah's belly button. Ouch!However, the first scene mentioned above is the one which marks the beginning of all the nonsense that is to come; from then on, there is little to no character development, and all the characters' behaviors start becoming extremely... illogical. They're not even stupid (like in most horror films), they simply don't follow any kind of logic. For instance, Sarah is trapped inside a bathroom for at least half of the attack; she doesn't even remotely considers going out the bathroom window. What? I mean, I get that she's pregnant and wouldn't be able to do it anyway, but come on, she's too desperate to not even consider doing it! That happens again when she finally manages to leave the bathroom and go downstairs: she checks the front door, and it is locked; and then she just moves to another room, not bothering to check a back door or an open window. Logic? Anyone?What's really done it for me, though (and got me laughing at how badly thought through this sequence was), was the fact that the psychotic woman manages to kill not one, not two, but THREE armed police officers, two of which she killed using just her scissors and knitting needles. What... the actual... f***? She even managed to slip a knitting needle out of her sleeve and killed one of them WHILE BEING HELD DOWN BY HIM. As if this wasn't laughable enough, one of the police officers got turned into a zombie. That's right! He got shot in the head earlier in the film and turns up alive to attack SARAH, and not the killer.There's also an awful tracheotomy Sarah performs on herself when she's not able to breathe, and not only does she pierces the wrong place (I could live with it if it was just this), but she also just patches up the hole with duct tape and it's all okay. Again... What?I'm really not asking for real world logic here, I just wanted SOME logical behavior from what initially appeared to be actually intelligent characters. Okay, maybe bring in some real world logic to change the fact that one of the police officers naturally wanders into a dark house from which shot sounds emanated from without at least calling for backup. Oh, and bringing a prisoner handcuffed with himself. Security logic thrown out the window here and definitely the worst sequence in this film.Bottom line is that Inside is an enjoyable and conceptually intelligent take on the home invasion genre, but its ambition to appear as more intelligent than it actually is (there's even a hidden social message in one scene) and its excessively gratuitous gore keep it from becoming a giant, truly impressive nightmare-provoking monster.

This films special effects were outstanding. There was no chance to take a breath from the violence as soon as it started. The killer uses a pair of scissors to attack almost every character, she uses these to pin hands to walls, jab kneecaps, shove in to groin area, slice face, even cut open a pregnant women and gut her after removing her baby, and so much more! Although the special effects were really well done, almost all of them were done in a house with no light except the bathroom. This means that it is really frustrating as it is really hard to see clearly what is going on. Also the stupidity of some of the characters was insane. They were ditching all common sense. One example is when one of the police officers realizes that there was this killer in the house and that there is a power cut but still goes in not alone, but with a criminal they had convicted earlier attached to him like a dog on a leash. Then when they see all of these graphically killed body's they are just looking for a way to turn on the power. Summary: This film has some amazingly graphic and cringy effects however these were overlooked by a rubbish story-line and character stupidity. And at the end I didn't really care about any of the characters or story.