Horror remake maintains chills
Like last year’s dreadful “Martyrs,” the home-invasion thriller “Inside” is a remake of an extremely violent French horror film, which softens the original so much that its point is lost. Unlike “Martyrs,” the new “Inside” remains gripping enough to unnerve anyone who doesn’t know it’s an adaptation.
Rachel Nichols stars as Sarah Clarke, an expectant mother who’s just survived a car crash that killed her husband. Alone at home and close to giving birth, she finds herself under attack from an unnamed stranger (played by Laura Harring), who intends to cut the fetus out of Sarah’s womb.
Director Miguel Ángel Vivas, working from a script written by Jaume Balagueró, takes the basic plot from Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s 2007 film and threads them through well-staged, visually striking suspense set pieces.
This new “Inside” makes superb use of absence. Scenes are darkly lighted and sparsely populated and play out on spare sets with minimal dialogue. Vivas is successful at turning the blandness of an upscale suburb into a blank canvas for mayhem. The shadowy villain slashes at everything that stands in her way — including one of the flimsiest bathroom doors this side of “The Shining.”
None of this amounts to much. The original had some squirmy points to make about femininity and motherhood that this “Inside” lacks. But the movie works on a gut level … as in, “Sharp blades are scary when they’re pointed at a pregnant belly.”
“Inside.” Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes. Playing: AMC Orange 30, Orange.