Greg Jardin’s “It’s What’s Inside” taps into the template of game nights that has hit a bit of a cultural flashpoint with the recent phenomenal success of films like “Talk to Me” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” The inherent chaos and looseness of the situation, as well as the playfully shifting tension within a circle of friends, can provide the bulwark for scintillating, edgy dramas. These circumstances are rife with unpredictable stakes. Things seem to be almost constantly perched on the anvil of disaster. No one knows when and how the mood can darken or lighten. This giddying thrill and uncertainty form the trope’s biggest strengths.
Such films also rely on a solid ensemble’s efficacy and quicksilver potential, in which every actor is perfectly clued into the other’s dynamic energies. Everyone has to be on some sort of similar page. Only then can there be some genuine fun, suspense, and nastiness. Jardin assembles a mostly sparkling cast, amplifying the energy the frantic twists of the narrative already have.
*Spoilers ahead*
It’s What’s Inside (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
“It’s What’s Inside” opens with two primary characters. They are the couple, Cyrus (James Morosini, in a standout, consistently riveting performance) and Shelby (Brittany O’Grady). The relationship has hit quite a rough patch. The sexual life between the couple has dipped. Shelby alleges Cyrus is barely interested in her. They have been together for a decade. There are often fights and tantrums exchanged between the two, though Cyrus insists he does try to be sexually interested in her and is up for whatever she wants. But she is weary of being the one who has to push for new activities that could spur their relationship.
In a heated mood, they try to camouflage their sour moods. They head to the reunion party of their college friend, Reuben (Devon Terrell). Reuben is getting hitched. It’s a night where their entire college circle assembles. Many haven’t seen one another in a while. But pockets of tension, insecurity, and envy are already palpable. Shelby strongly feels Cyrus may be attracted to Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a hip Instagram influencer.
At the party, Reuben has also invited one of their techie friends, Forbes (David W. Thompson). The latter had been expunged from the circle back during college when he was said to have got his underage sister Beatrice drunk and thereby expelled from college. Not everyone is pleasant and thrilled about Forbes, but they don’t express their discomfort. Happiness is postured at.
What Dark Secrets Will Be Unveiled in Forbes’ Dangerous Body-Swapping Game?
Forbes springs a game that he and his co-workers have devised. He brings out a suitcase with all kinds of wiring. This game enables a vivid, immersive, out-of-body experience. It is on another level altogether, beyond the high of an intoxicant. A person can swap his/her body with another person. It’s a miraculous brain transfer. Initially, everyone freaks out a bit, but quickly, the group leans into the unhinged, wild thrill of the game.
Nothing dramatic happens in the first round of the game, except for a gaslighting moment and a lie that proves to have significant ramifications in the film’s final stretch at the time of unmasking. The game allows people to run off with their fantasies for a brief while. Forbes lies about whose body he is in, and he pretends to be in Cyrus’s body. Cyrus meanwhile slips into Reuben’s body with which he can actualize his long, pent-up desire to get intimate with Nikki. He has secretly lusted after her for a while, even while he assures Shelby he only loves and fancies her.
Can the Group Escape the Chaotic Consequences of the Body-Swapping Game?
The second round is where the situation spins out of control. The drama sharply accentuates. Reuben can’t resist the opportunity to make out with Maya, though he is getting hitched the next day. Being in Dennis’s body, he seizes the chance to make out with Maya while she is in Brooke’s body. However, disaster strikes when they, in the heat of the moment, lose balance off the edge of the rooftop, and they fall to their deaths. Basically, this means Maya and Dennis are still alive, the former in Shelby’s body and the latter in Cyrus’s.
Anxious, Dennis calls the cops. Forbes tries to escape with the machine, but Nikki knocks him out. Shelby refuses to return to her body, her being in Nikki’s body. Cyrus pleads with her that he does love her but Maya adds that incident during the first round when Cyrus made out with her because she was in Nikki’s body.
Shelby’s offer to Cyrus that she will stay in Nikki’s body, and he switched to Reuben’s, is botched by Nikki’s deal with Forbes. The two plan to send everyone back to their bodies, except Dennis in Forbes’s and Forbes in Reuben’s body. She incapacitates Shelby with peanut allergy triggers. Nikki gives her the EpiPen to treat the allergy only after Forbes is allowed to look at the machine.
It’s What’s Inside (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Will Beatrice’s Masterful Revenge Leave Anyone Unscathed?
The coda, which happens after the fateful night, adds to Beatrice’s character. There’s a litany of revelations that follow in rapid succession. It’s a vital piece of information that’s shared. All this while, it was Beatrice who was in Forbes’s body. Now she has escaped with the suitcase that carries the machine. She is now in charge of her life, enabled to make of it what she wants. We are told that at the birthday party years ago, Beatrice had been failed by everyone present. Dennis gaslit and claimed that he wasn’t in a relationship with Beatrice. Everyone had chipped in, leading to Beatrice being sent to a mental institution.
Forbes visited Beatrice at the institution where he introduced her to the machine, hoping it’d ‘reconnect’ them. But she uses him to play out her grand scheme of revenge against everyone who betrayed her. Beatrice had taken Dennis’s money from his account when she was Cyrus inside Dennis’s body in the first round. This paves the way for laying the blame and building the case against Cyrus for the murder of Dennis. Beatrice can now enjoy a free life as Nikki. The only person she helps is Shelby, finding in her a connection as someone who is also betrayed by the men around her whom she’d deeply trusted.
