The Inside (II) (2012) User Reviews

Betrays a total lack of understanding of how film-making works

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 24 March 2015]

A one-man-band Irish horror film, directed, written and acted by Eoin Macken. Unfortunately this gentleman displays an entire lack of understanding of what's involved in the film-making process, and despite the found footage hook on which he hangs his movie, this turns out to be one of the worst in a glut of badly made recent horrors.

Narratives are all about ebb and flow. You start off subtle, build up tension and atmosphere to a climax, then simmer things down before building up again. Things inevitably lead to a final climax which should be bigger and more dramatic than that which has come before. This story, which tells of a birthday party in an abandoned building that goes horribly wrong, gives you precisely 10 minutes of set-up before letting rip with a constant soundtrack of high-pitched screaming.

I'm not kidding: there's no script here, just characters screaming and shouting for what seems like an eternity. Maybe it was done to cover up a lack of acting talent, but whatever the reason it's absolutely horrendous. The director has no understanding of subtlety or how it can be used to make a quietly effective and genuinely frightening movie. THE INSIDE goes all-out early on and stays like that till the climax.

The movie is also unpleasant, featuring defenceless women being terrorised by rapist thugs, at least at first. Things change later on, heavily indebted to the likes of REC and THE DESCENT as the party-goers fall victim to something sinister and nameless. But it's not scary, none of it is remotely frightening. The film also ends about 20 minutes too early and tacks on an extraneous sub-plot which makes it even worse, and I didn't even realise that was possible. This truly is the pits.

Dreadful

[neil-476 · 2/10 · 22 January 2015]

Tramps assault partygoers in a warehouse, following which things get worse - some alleged supernatural gubbins is involved.

This horror film is yet another found footage effort (with edits and changes in camera angles).

It is so dark as to be almost impossible to follow visually, not to mention the large amount of jittercam. The image quality is poor. And someone thought it was a brilliant idea to have screaming and non-stop snivelling featuring on the soundtrack for at least an hour longer than the film lasts.

This film is so horrible as to be virtually unwatchable.

Nauseating, dull and characterless

[ckmfox · 3/10 · 30 September 2023]

I never stop watching a film once I have started despite how bad it is, but this almost became a first. It was so dull and characterless, I didn't care about anybody in it and so couldn't care for the film. The story was non-existent, the script was awful. How many times can you use the words 'door' and 'camera' in one movie? The camera work was nauseating. The horror element was meaningless and did not make sense. This would have worked better in my opinion as a straight forward violent thriller but only if there had been better characters and we'd been given someone to care about.

Honestly I would not waste your time watching this. I wish I hadn't.

*sigh*

[unendurable_lampoonery · 1/10 · 1 November 2012]

I just saw this film at Monster fest Melbourne, and must say when it started I was already annoyed by screaming girls and shaky camera work, which i was expecting as it is another "found footage" film that i am getting very tired of. But then the vagrants come in and I'm thinking, this is messed up this could be really sinister and nasty, and then it dragged on, and on, with silly little cliché glitches of the camera extremely similar to the tall man series on you tube. then the over used baby cry that is never fully explained or reasoned and also chuck in some witch craft and satanic symbols on the wall, and I'm just thinking. "what is this film." people ended up just laughing through out the movie screening. I think a movie where you never care about the characters to begin with then you are made to feel a bit scared for them, then hate them again, and then I just wanted the film to end, but it just kept going. A number of people walked out on this film screening, I stayed as I will try to give everything a chance and this is sadly just bad.

Irish Blair witch with disturbing violence

[jjoesaundersers-820-759660 · 5/10 · 17 October 2013]

Not the best film ever set in an abandoned warehouse (aka cavern, aka old asylum etc.), but not the worst.

The girls do overact it a bit, the psycho lads can act and give real menace to some of the scenes.

The supernatural or horror aspect is something that may have been seen as original (shaky camera and odd angles) some years ago. It comes across to me as getting a bit in the way of what could be a better film.

The 'hero' character, for want of a better description, makes the last twenty minutes drag a little with frustration that he, the character, seems to have no common sense in going into the situation he does, an unnecessary dragging out of the end. I enjoyed it, but it's quirky and not an A class entertainment at all.

Annoying Garbage

[OnlyAtJMart · 1/10 · 15 February 2014]

This movie is one of the most annoying, irritating, obnoxious, and infuriating things I have ever seen and heard. Every noise that came out of these girls mouths made me want to jam something in to my ears. At first with their giant mouths bitching, gossiping, grandstanding, and gabbing over one another in some garbled mess that would make the dialog coming out of the mouths of drunken women at a bachelorette party seem like Shakespeare. Then later with the screaming, crying, whimpering, moaning, whining, and repeating things like "we have to go" and equally clichéd dialog over and over and over and over monotonously, that I was actually hoping the rapists would kill them. Not to mention that the camera-work could have been improved if it were filmed by someone suffering from Parkinson's disease. The atmosphere was actually tense, and what could have been an effective horror film was ruined by poor execution. I would avoid this one at all costs. If you do watch it, I can not recommend a volume higher than mute.

Incoherent mess

[greekgod41 · 1/10 · 6 June 2021]

I'm struggling to find the words here as I'm trying not to be too negative but there's nothing redeemable about this trash at all. This film is also why anyone who dares use the obnoxious "shaky cam" style of filming needs to be fired and never work in Hollywood ever again. To say the shaky cam footage in this film is unwatchable is an understatement. It is so bad you literally couldnt see anything. You couple that with nearly every scene being almost totally dark, women screaming and crying every second you end up with this ridiculous trash of a film.

SPOILERS :

Women find themselves partying in an abandoned warehouse, get terrorized and abused by the most obnoxious and foul vagrants who are so unlikable that you question can these men be that evil? Non stop screaming and screaming from the women even when there's no need to scream and cry, to the point you just wished they would all be killed off, the men disappear for no reason, then inexplicably supernatural stuff happens, then they get terrorized some more, more screaming. A total mess of a film.

I'm at a loss for words. Fails as a story, succeeds wildly as a cold-hearted tapestry of simple, visceral fear for its own sake.

[Hal_Opinot-Pepper · 8/10 · 18 September 2015]

I just got blown away by this movie. Yes, by conventional film standards, it sucks: almost no story, no narrative arc, almost no dialog for the second half, nothing is ever explained, entirely full of insipid depthless characters who are either brutally loathsome (most of the men) or spend a hell of a lot of time doing nothing but wandering through a darkened building whimpering and screaming (most of the females), spends too much time indulging itself in banal torture porn conventions without going anywhere. I don't even think many of the characters had names. It doesn't even have a trace of the pretentious art-house conventions some films stoop to in order to try to justify the obvious lack of conventional movie-making skill.

And yet, I loved it. I was floored and genuinely scared watching it. I will definitely watch it again.

It's barely a story, it's more just a tapestry of murky, mounting fear, presented for its own sake. In some ways, it's comparable to Fellini in its broad, expositionless, near-abstract presentation of something more wrested from the subconscious than designed to satisfy the intellect.

Its focus on tone rather than narrative is reminiscent of, yes, found-footage origin The Blair Witch Project, but even moreso, of old Giallo horror films, films that reveled in the idea of fear and focused more on creepy mood than the more conventional trappings of movies as "quality" entertainment. No part of the movie is really all that dependent on any other part an any strict way, and it even abandons its "found footage" first-person perspective before it gets to the end. But even so, once it finds makes one of its several shifts and finds its footing about halfway through, abandoning what seems to be a banal brutality-as-spectacle approach and shifting to the stuff of deeper, more phantasmagoric nightmares, it becomes easily the only truly scary film I've seen in a long time. I'm not going to include spoilers, but there are moments in here as iconic and viscerally chilling as Nosferatu's long-fingernailed shadow gliding silently up a stairway wall.

I was genuinely surprised to see "The Inside"'s low 3.3/10 rating on IMDb, but it makes sense. It succeeds in a much less polished, and quieter, but otherwise similarly unconventional way as Lars von Trier's "Antichrist", another film that doesn't even remotely attempt to be enjoyable as a movie-going experience, which, like this film, deceived a lot of people into thinking it was a bad movie instead of quite the opposite.

I almost gave it 9 stars. I still might. This film knows exactly what it wants to be, and it unapologetically is that and only that, to the very core. If you don't like it, the problem may not be with the film, but with you. Despite the rocky beginning, this film's ultimate odd, offputting achievement deserves to be considered a misfit classic.

Half-decent found-footage low budget horror

[mfcoder-imdb · 6/10 · 3 December 2013]

This film is about 80% "found footage" so if Blair-Witch-like puts you off, probably not for you. Shot on video, it has the feeling of low- budget, but much better than many low-budget horrors.

Firstly, although the acting amongst the females is a little too 'screamy' they're in quite an unpleasant situation almost from the start, so it's understandable. The script is fairly realistic, and the antagonists that arrive are suitably menacing and unpleasant - this isn't a film full of nice people, and it's definitely worth its rating, more for the scenarios, than for any graphic blood-letting.

The story itself is fairly interesting, and the suspense quite gripping. It feels as though there's a prequel story to be told which would hold my attention.

Not a stand-out movie, but evidently a "one-man" show (written, directed, produced by same guy) that is far better than similar ones in this genre, and you definitely feel it has merit.

There are more than a few 'huh?' moments in terms of what the main characters do, but there is much left untold - and I feel it's okay for not every aspect of the events to be tidied up and given a neat explanation.

In summary, much better than I expected. Professional looking, and well executed. A film-maker to encourage and look out for.

bad, very bad

[damagedqueen · 14 February 2014]

I can't believe I managed to sit through all of this, it was just horrible. First off, like most amateur camera movies, you can't see half of the movie.

Second off, the sound, nothing but screams, whimpers, whining... it was very annoying.

Third, the monster? seriously? uhm, no.

Seriously what are the kids doing in a place like this for a birthday anyway? Doesn't make any sense.

And what is that guy doing going back there, without letting the cops know, in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? Makes even less sense.

The whole thing was horrible. My ears are still bleeding from all the screaming. I really don't recommend this movie.

I know it's low budget, but the story might have been better if we actually saw the whole thing.

My score is only to raise the unfairky low scores this has

[anthonyjllopez · 10/10 · 11 February 2020]

This movie is bizarre and abstract. The horror imagery once it gets going is some of the best you will find in the found footage genre and far and away more frightening than most conventional horror films. It has its shortcomings and is uneven. The entire scene with the three guys showing up unannounced could have been replaced with character development as its really poorly done and unnecessary. But dont let that deter you because this movie cranks the horror into overdrive hahaha. Sure its not the witch or the wailing. Its low budget and unpolished. But if you like unexplained expressionistic horror this is for you. Not sure what the is going on except for maybe a demon or vampire mutant. Who knows. Its art house horror and it works if you are into these kind of movies.

Enjoyable found footage ...

[parry_na · 7/10 · 18 January 2016]

In some ways this could be the most realistic found-footage film of all that I have seen – in that it's often impossible to work out what's going on. Equally, the depictions of the group of teenagers getting drunk and swapping embarrassing stories is immediately tiresome.

As the story goes, a man (Eoin Macken, who also writes, produces and directs) gains possession of a second hand camcorder, and on it he finds footage that appears to depict the final hours spent by a group of currently missing Irish girls. Spending an evening in an abandoned warehouse isn't everyone's idea of a good way to celebrate a birthday, and tempers are frayed from the outset. These are flawed people. When they are attacked by vagrants, however, it comes as a relief the camera-work is shaky and obfuscates the resulting raw abuse.

When it is revealed there is a bigger, supernatural threat at large, the pace of the film slows. We are treated to quite slow scenes involving the characters reacting to barely glimpsed creatures not dissimilar to those in 'The Descent', and some unexplained sounds of a baby crying.

The found footage formula ends when 'The Man' has reached the finale and we return to more coherent, slick direction of regular film-making for what I feel is the least convincing part of the story. Having seen a group apparently slaughtered by demonic forces in a location that is familiar, would you then take it upon yourself to investigate that very area, unarmed and alone? Because I wouldn't. Yet that is exactly what the man does. Would he not hand over the webcam to the police? I justify his actions in this way: we saw him pawn his ring for cash. Perhaps he has a drug habit and is reticent to contact the law? I wouldn't suggest for a moment that people who pawn their goods are addicts, but it's the only reason I can imagine he doesn't contact professionals to deal with this. Much as this lapse of logic happens in horror films, I found it difficult to get past here, which mars an otherwise very effective feature.

Very unfair rating on here should be 5/10

[decackroyd · 7/10 · 1 August 2020]

7/10 is generous, really it's a 5/10 but the user ratings are unfairly low.

75% of the film is found footage and tbh that's the all the film should have been, the none found footage parts are unnecessary and kind of stupid.

But overall the acting is convincing, and there's some genuinely unnerving parts, uncomfortable watching (which is kind of what you're looking for in a horror). Worth your time, but not a film you'd revisit particularly.