Whenever there is a new work that bears the title Inside, you can be almost certain it's going to be about people having a real bad time. Be it the 2007 French horror film about a pregnant woman who is terrorized in her home by an intruder or Bo Burnham's 2021 comedy special where he is terrorized by his own mind during the COVID pandemic, experiences confined to the interior are most interesting when they find creative ways to explore within their self-imposed limitations.
That's also true in the new narrative feature debut from director Vasilis Katsoupis, which, while it doesn't always make the most of its premise, still settles into an unnerving rhythm the longer it goes on. It isn't as scary or as introspective as either of the aforementioned works, but it never tries to be. Instead, it is a psychological thriller that takes its time. The experience is built around letting the dread sink in as we observe a man wasting away, completely and utterly alone.
This man is Nemo, played by the great Willem Dafoe, and he is an art thief. An opening sequence follows him as he drops from an unseen helicopter into a fancy New York penthouse. He talks with another man on the radio who helps him bypass the security to get inside, where he begins stealing the pieces they came for. With time running short, he tries to find one portrait that isn't where they thought it would be. When this search proves fruitless, he takes all of what he was able to find and tries to hastily exit using a code given to him. He inputs it exactly as told, but it doesn't work. Alarms start blaring and — despite his pleas for help — Nemo's co-conspirators abandon him. It is here that he will remain for the rest of the film.
Even as he doesn't ever really go anywhere, it is an almost spiritual journey that Nemo soon undertakes. After discovering there is no easy solution to his perilous predicament, he must shift into survival mode. He will have to deal with fluctuating temperatures due to malfunctioning technology, a lack of food as the original occupants left little behind, and, perhaps most significantly, the impacts of his own isolation. Dafoe embodies this with an understated yet gripping performance, as Nemo goes from methodically doing what is needed to stay alive to slowly unraveling before us when facing down his own mortality. The only portal he has to the outside world is security camera footage he can view on the television, providing a tether to humanity that brings into focus all that he may never again experience for himself.
Who Nemo is outside of this is something that we know very little about. Dafoe gives a short yet revealing monologue twice during the film with an almost resigned venom at the character's own flaws, but he mostly is silent. Save for when he begins to hallucinate, Katsoupis never gives us a breather from the suffocating isolation by allowing him to interact with anyone else. It lacks the verve of a film like The Lighthouse, where Dafoe was able to bounce off another performer as their world began to come completely undone from reality. Inside is more grounded than that, and, even with discoveries that Nemo makes, it's oddly almost formulaic. Often as workmanlike as the man himself, it's best when it dances with its many more esoteric ideas.
Nemo is destroying much of the penthouse, even as he is also creating. Specifically, he is building a structure out of broken furniture in the middle of it all. As much as this is about him trying to escape, it also becomes a monument to his suffering that we are all now observing. The destruction also extends to Nemo himself, as the man who entered the penthouse is no longer the same one who is trying to escape it. His confinement becomes an art installation, one contemplating the nature of art and creation itself. This richer engagement with the metaphorical can feel like it is being subsumed by elements of the literal, but it still remains as something to latch onto. Inside is fleeting in moments while being resonant in others, making the cinematic portrait of this man as flawed yet fascinating as he is. ♦
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