The I Inside

Evidently The I Inside is not due for release in the UK until 2005, but Frightfest in London screened this on 28 August 2004.

This starts off very promising, with Ryan Phillippe's character Simon Cable regaining consciousness in the year 2002 and again in 2000, not entirely sure what he has been doing with his life during the two intervening years. The first couple of "switches" between time-lines succeeded at dis-orientating and jolting the audience admirably, but after some meandering, the "switches" become relatively tedious and gratuitous, and I felt that they did little to further the plot.

The periphery characters all do a sterling job at providing a sense of unease (Piper Perabo is pretty outstanding), but after Simon has "switched" years several times, I found it difficult to retain my attention. By the final denouement, I was past caring, and noticed only with a passing interest that the ending was incredibly similar to another memory-loss psychological thriller from the mid-nineties.

Perhaps I just watched too many films of this sort for my own good? If only I had suffered my own personal memory loss and forget The Butterfly Effect and Jacob's Ladder, then perhaps I would have enjoyed this more.

I've never liked the idea of test screenings. The changes they make just end up neutering a movie and making it "safe" for the general masses. But if ever a movie needed feedback to prompt a rewrite and alternate ending, this is it.

The first half of this movie is spectacular. It's atmospheric, tense, and confusing (in a good way). It kept you guessing the whole way. Much like Memento, it's an intelligent film that makes you watch closely and think. The story could have gone a number of directions.

...but the last half, it all falls apart. They start changing the "rules", the suspense gives way to straight storytelling, and the ending goes a completely different direction than it could have, and SHOULD have. It's not just that I didn't like the ending or that it didn't match my predictions. The problem is the truth is still unclear and viewers are left confused. Too much is left unexplained.

As it is, the film is wasted potential. A good story and a good movie, but one that could have been so much better with a different ending.

This is a little seen thriller and it's almost a shame, because it has quite a few good ideas. Some work, some might not work for you, but the overall story is very complex and very well told. It's not a movie, where you could say exactly where it is going. I don't think you could tell unless you had read quite a few articles on the film, which would be a shame.

But Ryan Phillipe does a great job, conveying this complex and very difficult emotional role he has to play. It's not only trying to keep up, where you are exactly (in the script), but in the overall structure of the movie. I know that some think that it does fall short towards the end, and I get the sentiment. But I still think the ending is pretty strong, to still make you rather like the viewing, than not.

There should be another category to describe films that don't exactly fit the accepted genres of horror, supernatural or psychological thriller.

I call it the "Puzzle-Box" genre. Puzzle-Box films challenge you to think and discover the answers, rather than spoon-feeding them to you. Not everyone enjoys that when going to the movies. Classifying a film as a Puzzle-Box would make it easier for that film to find its audience.

THE I INSIDE is one of those films. Others are MULHOLLAND DRIVE, IDENTITY (same writer as THE I INSIDE), JACOB'S LADDER, and many modern Korean films, such as OLDBOY, HYPNOTIZED, TALE OF TWO SISTERS, and the brilliant but obscure SPIDER FOREST. And to a lesser extent, MEMENTO, which is fun on the first watch, but bored me on the second, since no new clues are revealed.

THE I INSIDE give more answers at the end than OLDBOY or MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but it is still a fascinating film.

This is is Ryan Phillippe's most challenging role, and he does an excellent job, but the standout for me was Piper Perabo-- she went through some tricky personality quirks (I'm purposely leaving things vague) which added to the mystery.

Considering how great this movie was in the beginning I was stunned why I had never heard of it or why it only got a rating of 6.0 on IMDb. It had to have something to do with how the story unfolded. Turns out, that this is indeed the problem. The first 45 minutes of "The I Inside" are really a blast. The story sucks you in immediately and unfolds beautifully until a certain point is reached where the writer lost control and messed up what had been set up so well. All of a sudden the story's getting way over the top, apparently for no other reason than to keep the viewer puzzled. That wouldn't have been necessary. They could have taken the story anywhere as intriguing as it started. Unfortunately, the plot becomes uneven when the "rules" of the movie are adapted arbitrarily. The final solution doesn't really come as a surprise anymore. Worse still, it's not good enough to explain everything. It's obvious that there are mistakes and flaws throughout the script and it's a shame, because, as I've said, unlike a lot of other movies where the story is already set up for an impossible, unbelievable ending, "The I Inside" had a more than promising start. Anyway, although the movie isn't completely satisfying and kind of stumbles over its own feet, it's still very entertaining to watch. It has an atmospheric stage play-like atmosphere (in fact, the story has been adapted from a play called "Point Of Death") and there are some really creative suspense scenes. Summing up, "The I Inside" isn't the masterpiece it could have been, but it's a nice way to spend 90 minutes.