Writer-Director Greg Jardin takes the familiar thrills of body swap movies and runs riot in his maddeningly exhilarating debut, “It’s What’s Inside.” Released on Netflix, the film’s abundant number of successful attempts at threading the needle of executing genre tropes culminate in a stylishly smart outing. With slick camerawork, smoothly sharp cuts, and a young cast embracing the opportunity to go bonkers, Jardin has all his cylinders firing simultaneously and seamlessly. The result is a wild ride, a psychological thriller here to swoon the horror aficionados (and others) this Halloween season.
“It’s What’s Inside” opens with the emphatic statement that this is not a movie that is only going to rely on its genre’s tropes. It is going to play with them, and it is going to be clever about it. We are introduced to our protagonist couple. Cyrus (James Morosini) and Shelby (Brittany O’Grady), sweethearts from college, greet us with their feisty argument. Their tête-à-tête raises its intensity by the second. Matching the tempo, the camera gets closer, and the cuts get faster. The effect is that of suffocating each other—a glimpse of what is to come concerning the couple. The visual connotations are rich. The style Jardin yields forces you to lean forward in your seat with interest, much like the meme.
As Cyrus and Shelby go to one of their college friends, Reuben’s (Devon Terrell) bachelor party, one can sense the palpable tension of what is to come. The bachelor party, which acts more like a college reunion party, brings the game’s players together. We have Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), the fashion influencer with millions of followers on Instagram. Then there is Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), who seems to have not moved on from his college days. We have the alternate-lifestyle-embracing weird Maya (Nina Bloomgarden) and the extrovert Brooke (Reina Hardesty).
Written by Jardin himself, the screenplay does not dilly-dally in establishing characters with minutely etched-out backstories. Staying true to its genre roots, “It’s What’s Inside” relies more on character tics and smartly woven conversation to establish what role each character is supposed to fulfill. Something the Queen of Thrillers herself, Agatha Christie, would do as she did in “And Then There Were None.” As the audience, do we sometimes get confused while grappling with the group dynamic? With questions like who likes whom? Who used to hold a candle for whom? Who betrayed whom? – Yes.
But the film plays with that confusion as Jardin’s story finally puts the cat among the pigeons — it is the Mark Zuckerberg look-alike, Forbes (David Thompson), a long-lost friend of the same group. With another cleverly impressive visual trick of using still photo montages, Brooke and Nikki tell us how Forbes’ wild party-going nature was his downfall when he was expelled from college for bringing his underage sister to a drinking party. So, when Forbes knocks on the door ominously to come to this reunion party, one cannot blame the others for being a little shifty about it. The shiftiness increases when he introduces his new toy as if it is just another board game. With the “Pulp Fiction” briefcase glow and mysticism, Forbes’ briefcase displays the machine allowing participants to switch their bodies.
The reluctance to partake in such a dangerously engrossing game evaporates with alcohol and drugs. With each round, the walls of the relationship fall. The confusion heightens, and so does the desire. The desire to be someone else, to be in someone else’s skin, to covet someone else without your partner knowing about it. It is a whirlwind of mistaken identity and missed opportunities. Just when you think it cannot get more messy (in a good sense), Jardin brings another layer of obfuscation—the obfuscation of plain old lying.
With the body swap stories, one expects certain twists. “It’s What’s Inside” is no different in that regard. What it does differently is that it is smartly stylish about it. Jardin does not do handholding but incorporates eclectic color gradation to reveal the character within the character. The revelation comes as crafty punctuations and not as an exposition dump, just like the frequent but excellent use of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.
It would be remiss of me if I didn’t pick the performances of the cast as one of the driving forces of the film, along with the deft editing and cinematography. The actors play the characters, and then they play the characters, playing other characters multiple times. There is subtlety in that myriad of portrayals. They are not only convincing in their roles but equally deft at mimicking their body-switch role. This is the case with the entire cast. A superbly talented young ensemble cast helps Greg Jardin play with the possibilities of the story. Ultimately, “It’s What’s Inside” is playfully fun.
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