Premiering in Tribeca, “Inside” (2025) is an Australian psychological crime drama about three prisoners in desperate need of human connection. It takes place in a harsh and distant environment that underlines their painful past every passing minute. Unlike the characters usually explored in similar films, these three men are not in denial about what they have done. They know that they are guilty and may never be absolved of their sins, making it even harder for them to venture out into the world. So, they constantly fight an internal battle not to be cynical about their future.
Needless to say, “Inside” isn’t about the hopes of leaving prison but about the attempts to figure out what to do with the life they have left with all their emotional baggage. So, leaving prison seems less liberating and more limiting or demanding to them. Inside, they know the rules of their world and what they need to do to survive. However, there’s more at stake in the real world, where endless possibilities feel like burdens. With prisoners, there’s often a fear of repeating past mistakes or not being able to have a life worth living.
The same fear surrounds the film’s three central characters. The youngest among them, Mel Blight (Vincent Miller), gets transferred from a juvenile to an adult prison. Upon admission, he is made to share a room with Mark Shepard (Cosmo Jarvis), who was arrested for a heinous crime that he committed as a teen. That gives him the reputation of the most reviled criminal in the country. However, Mel isn’t aware that he is moving into the same cell with Mark. So, he naively shares space with Mark, hoping to find a kind-hearted companion before he gets out of prison.
Soon, Mel realizes Mark’s truth and the inner workings of their prison. Still, he sees Mark acting as a religious preacher, delivering sermons to account for his revolting past. These sermons allow him to channel his childhood trauma into something that feels close to an emotional release. Yet, he is reviled by nearly every inmate, including middle-aged Warren Murfett (Guy Pearce). Unlike Mel or Mark, Warren squandered his life’s potential as an adult, which makes his guilt sting perhaps a bit more. It made him drift apart from his family, which he couldn’t support. Still, acceptance from the outside world seems attainable to him as compared to Mark, for whom it feels like a long shot.
“Inside” places these characters in a world that may never forgive them. It shows them learning to accept themselves while working on overwhelming shame, guilt, and regret that haunt them. That’s essentially what brings Mel and Warren together. As someone stepping into adulthood, Mel seeks a father figure, while Warren seeks someone who can rely on him. Their interdependence becomes crucial as the film unfolds and leads them into a do-or-die situation. While the stakes get higher, the film lingers around these characters instead of rushing through their arc. It allows us to feel even the tiniest bits of their emotion as they slowly reveal all that they are capable of.
Writer-director Charles Williams uses a stripped-down directorial approach much like Greg Kwedar has done for “Sing Sing.” He offers his actors creative space to flesh out their scenes, which helps them present all their qualms, unfiltered, as they navigate their way through a pessimistic rabbit hole. Yet, unlike Kwedar’s film, “Inside” is a far more cynical outlook on how crimes infect the prisoners’ minds and debilitate them from being functioning members of society. Williams’ screenplay makes it particularly harder for us to sympathize with any of them. It shows just how damaged they are due to several years of social distance and rejection. Still, it finds a way to reveal the few bits of humanity that they desperately try to cling to.
“Inside” examines the nature vs nurture aspect of their personalities and offers their disconcerting accounts that are hard to get over. A lot of it sticks and stings due to its performances, especially Cosmo Jarvis’, who channels the kind of raw intensity that is hard to shake off. He is so good that you would be scared to meet Jarvis in person if this is the only project you have seen him in. Jarvis portrays Mark as someone intimidating but deeply hurt, quite similar to Owen Cooper’s portrayal in Netflix’s “Adolescence.”Jarvis’s acting style is akin to Tom Hardy’s, who can present the beastliness of his characters through a heightened emotional display that rarely hits a false note.
Aside from Jarvis, Guy Pierce expertly brings out the intrinsic tragedy of his deeply flawed character. He commands your attention in every single frame he is in while getting us unnervingly close to his character’s damaged core. Vincent Miller presents Mel’s innocence, making him the ideal antidote to Mark and Warren’s emotional struggles. Together, they make these characters feel seen and heard without being sympathized with.
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