Directed by Vassilis Katsupis, the movie Inside shows how Nemo, a house burglar who intends to steal art from a luxurious penthouse, finds himself in a terrifying trap. The penthouse is equipped with a “smart home” system, so after the robber enters, the security system blocks all exits, and Nemo starts to pour over either heat or cold. He falls into a real nightmare and slowly loses his mind.
What is the movie “Inside” about?
The character steals some art objects, but the main value – a self-portrait of the owner of a fashionable mansion – is not able to be found. The man is confused, time is lost, his partner on the radio reports that he is unable to help Nemo. The doorways are blocked, the windows cannot be pierced by a bullet. It is impossible to get out of the mansion. And when the owner of the penthouse will return is completely unclear.
Actor Willem Dafoe, playing Nemo, brings out the wild and crazy side of himself. Most of the time the character spends in his own inner hell, he has no control over reality. And to survive, he needs to take some drastic measures.
Inside is a unique survival situation. The film not only shocks and horrifies the audience. Defoe’s game with Nemo’s psychic distortion confuses them, attracting them with a unique survival situation.
“Inside” the director-debutant has a capacious internal concept. There is no reflection on how the character got to this life and what will happen to him later. The ending is blurry, far from clear. There are several options for the development of events. Viewers will have to find out the details of the personality and past of the character on their own. Katsupis does not abuse esotericism and does not go too far with abstraction.
The movie “Inside”, on the contrary, is quite mundane. A “smart” mansion for a character is like a desert island. Nemo is trying to find food (the fridge is empty) and water (the aquarium water is not drinkable), to make devices to escape from the trap. The “smart” house is built by the authors creatively. The character is fighting with a faulty radiator, trying to repair the automatic plant watering system. However, he fails to flush his own waste in a malfunctioning toilet.
In the film, an entertaining relationship develops between the symbolically “low” and “high”. This is also a spatial high-tech film – the canvases always appear entirely in the lens of the movie camera, get stuck in the subconscious of the character. From the director’s work, aesthetics are emphasized – literally all frames can be placed in a frame. However, the picture “Inside” is completely without aplomb. In the end, the director only needs the aesthetic space of the mansion decoration in order to rip it up and turn it into a pile of attractive garbage. Reflections on art are not of interest to the film at all. Nemo barely speaks. Mostly screams, grunts, or sings to Macarena.
The meaning of the film “Inside”
In this film, the character is literally locked in a closed space. Against the background of the lack of food and water, the hero is left alone with expensive antiques and aquarium fish, which become both friends and food for him. In such a situation, his name Nemo sounds very sarcastic. Defoe carries the entire film on his shoulders.
Defoe seems to become part of a living figurative composition. Nemo admits through voice-over that, as a child, he thought that in the event of a fire, he would be the very first person on the list to save art albums, AC / DC and a cat, and not his sister and his parents at all. In the film, he is forced to overcome such a way of thinking, feels cognitive dissonance, a break in the pattern, and finds himself in a hermetically isolated environment in favor of art and representatives of the fauna.
In other words, his lifestyle is becoming hectic, similar to the existence of remote workers who survived the pandemic in 2020. The audience wants to believe that Nemo will not lose his mind.
Locked inside a New York penthouse with antiques inside, the character must use all his ingenuity, determination, resourcefulness for his own survival.
Explanation of the ending of the movie “Inside”
The character’s health leaves much to be desired. With a broken leg, a disturbed psyche, and a lack of food, he has little chance of salvation. He even completely painted the wall, realizing his imminent death in the “smart” mansion. After all, even his last hope for a fire alarm did not work.
All hope is gone. The character writes and leaves a note to the owner of this mansion. In it, he proposes to destroy this place, and argues that art is born only from destruction.
Nemo’s final desperate attempt to reach the skylight is shown. The panel fixed above it collapses and falls down.
At the beginning of the film, Nemo talks about art, which should be the first to be saved in the event of a fire. And by the end of “Inside” the full cycle with the participation of the character closes. At the same time, antiques and a self-portrait of the owner are preserved.
Now only the viewer has to guess whether Nemo escaped through the glass opening or died of hunger. But, most likely, he escaped, but fell into the hands of the justice authorities.
