Inside (2007): The 2007 French horror film ‘Inside’ (French title: À l’intérieur), directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, is now streaming on Shudder. Béatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis play the central roles in this incredibly gory horror flick. Written by the co-director Bustillo, it is considered a part of the new wave of French horror cinema. It revolves around a home invasion attack on an unsuspecting pregnant woman by a mysterious stranger who cannot let her experience any semblance of peace throughout a particular night.
This gruesome slasher flick is also a taut chamber drama and an intense psychological thriller. Béatrice Dalle, who stars as the home invader in this film, is vastly popular for her roles in films like Betty Blue, Lux Æterna, and Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth.
*Spoilers Ahead*
Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s Inside begins with terrifying shots of a baby inside a womb. We hear the voice of a mother promising to keep her baby safe inside her body. Suddenly, we hear the sound of a thud. It takes us to the footage of a car in an accident with a burnt engine. The couple inside the car is covered in blood as it pours outside. The man does not wake up, but the woman does. She is expecting a baby.
The narrative then shifts to Christmas Eve, roughly four months after the expectant woman – Sarah Scarangella (Alysson Paradis), survives the car crash. We meet her inside a maternal ward a day before the delivery, where she plans out her next day with the doctor. While Sarah sits outside and waits for her mother, a nurse comes by and engages in small talk. She shares how she had four children and how the first childbirth experience was utterly painful.
Sarah’s mother – Louise (Nathalie Roussel), walks her out of the hospital and offers to stay with her for the night. Sarah refuses to let her do so and rather asks her boss, Jean-Pierre (François-Régis Marchasson), to bring her to the hospital for the delivery. Still not over her husband’s death, she is gloomy and dejected. She goes back home, looks at all the photos she clicked of her and her husband, and imagines him embracing her. His absence clearly weighs heavily upon her. She spends her time knitting with the sounds of a cat in her kitchen. While she dozes off in her rocking chair, she has nightmares about the delivery.
Soon after, a woman knocks on Sarah’s door. She says that her car broke down on the street corner and asks if she could come in and use Sarah’s phone quickly to call for help. Sarah lies that her husband is sleeping, and she does not want to disturb him. The woman keeps trying to persuade Sarah to let her enter, at least for a minute, but Sarah does not allow that. The woman says she knows that Sarah’s husband is dead.
How would a stranger know that information about her? This terrifies Sarah. She soon notices her in a window while she lights a cigarette. Sarah calls Jean-Pierre to inform him about this dangerous woman’s presence, who knows her name, and about her husband’s death. Jean-Pierre says that the police will arrive there within a matter of minutes.
Sarah, who is a professional photographer, notices the mysterious woman trying to break the window and clicks a blurry, grainy picture of her. She goes back to her developing room but cannot clearly see the woman’s face. However, when she looks at the photo she clicked during her park visit with Jean-Pierre, she notices a woman creeping up from the bush in the background – looking at a couple playing with their child.
The police officers soon arrive at Sarah’s house and check the parameters. But they cannot find traces of any woman. Sarah shares the blurry photo, and the officers say that it won’t be of any use to them. They think she probably went away and tell Sarah not to worry. The TV news talk about the riots as a result of the deaths of the children of two immigrants in France.
Soon, Sarah falls asleep. She suddenly wakes up but does not realize the stranger lurking behind her in the dark. She calls Jean-Pierre and hopes he can blow up the woman’s pictures the next day. Although still restless, she goes back to her bed. She does not realize the woman is standing right next to her. While Sarah is asleep, the woman walks around the house and brings scissors from the bathroom. Then, she walks back to the bedroom and stabs Sarah right in her belly.
Sarah wakes up terrified by this sudden attack and makes a run for her and her baby’s lives. She rushes to the bathroom and locks the door from inside. Soon after, Jean-Pierre comes to the house, worried for Sarah’s safety. She meets the woman and mistakes her for Sarah’s mother. She says that it took hours for Sarah to fall asleep, and they should not wake her up. Then Louise steps into the house, and Jean-Pierre realizes the woman he met is the same woman Sarah told him about.
By then, Louise walks up to the bathroom, hoping to check on her daughter. But Sarah becomes so paranoid by then that she opens the door and stabs her own mother with a needle. Meanwhile, Jean-Pierre tries to walk up the stairs to reach Sarah. But the woman catches up to him and stabs him with her scissors. She drags him out to the hall, smothers him with a pillow, and then stabs the scissor into his face.
The woman notices Sarah having walked out of the bathroom and grabs her hair. Sarah gets hold of the woman’s arm with a needle while she enters the bathroom. She locks the door and stays inside. The woman cuts holes into the door and tells Sarah that she wants her kids. She struggles to comprehend that she can’t get her wish fulfilled. Soon after, she hears the police sirens outside the house. She makes sure that Sarah won’t be able to leave the bathroom and come out.
Do the police officers manage to save Sarah from the mysterious woman?
Sarah keeps stabbing holes inside the bathroom door, hoping the thumping sound will alert the officers. The cops knock on the main door and mistake the stranger for Sarah. She says that everything is fine and there’s no disturbance. The cops ask about the thumping sound, and the woman says that the washing machine is making it. So they go back to the car but quickly realize that the woman they met is not pregnant like they were told. They barge into the house and notice the blood on the walls around them.
One cop stays with the woman while the other walks up to the bathroom and notices the bloodbath. He soon finds Sarah’s hand coming out of a hole in the bathroom hole, stabbed with a knife. While he tries to save Sarah, the woman stabs a needle in the eye of the first cop. The second cop manages to open the bathroom door. But by then, the mysterious woman reaches there and shoots him from the back.
What happens to the third cop and the prisoner?
The third cop, sitting in the outside car with a prisoner, rushes to the house. He notices that both the cops are dead, and Sarah is covered with blood. He goes out to look for the invader but can’t find her. By the time he returns to the bathroom, the lights go off. He surmises that the stranger cut off the connection but tries to calm down Sarah. The cop tries to bandage her wounds and tells her to wait for him in the bedroom. Furthermore, he goes out to the hall with the prisoner and tries to get the power back on. The woman shoots him with a gun and then stabs the prisoner with a knife.
Inside (2007) Movie Ending, Explained:
After stabbing the prisoner in his face, the woman returns to Sarah’s room. Sarah bites at her face and runs away to another room. She locks the door from the inside and takes the needle out of a dead body’s face. Subsequently, she walks down to the hall, and the woman catches up to her. She knocks the needle out of Sarah’s hand and drags her back to the kitchen. Sarah tries to resist the attack and threatens to stab her own baby. The woman suddenly hits her with a toaster and knocks her back to the ground.
Why did the mysterious woman want Sarah’s baby?
While the woman tries to light up a cigarette, Sarah burns her face with an aerosol container. Sarah uses a needle to stab herself in the throat as the woman walks away, and blood keeps oozing from her wound. Within moments, she realizes what she just did and tapes her neck. Then she walks out with a rod and her camera and clicks the pictures of all the victims. The woman then reveals that she was driving the other car from the accident where Sarah’s husband died. The accident also killed this mysterious woman’s unborn child. That is why she wanted Sarah’s baby as a replacement.
Does Sarah and her baby survive by the end of the night?
Does the mysterious woman get Sarah’s baby as she wanted?
Within moments, the third cop, who the woman shot, turns on the power. Turns out, he survived the attack and is now partially blinded and disoriented. He tries to attack Sarah. But the mysterious woman saves her by attacking him with a rod. Then, she follows Sarah and performs a cesarean section on her with scissors. She tears Sarah’s belly and lets the blood flow out freely. In the end, she manages to save the baby but ends up taking Sarah’s life. Then, she walks back to the hall, sits on the chair, and cradles the baby. We briefly hear the cries of that baby while Sarah lies on the stairs in her own pool of blood.
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