Nightmare Fuel / Inside (2007)

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

She wants to come in...

Man... Where should we start? One of the most notorious movies of the so called French New Extremity, this movie has become quiet infamous due to its graphic, ruthless, brutal and scarring portrayal of on-screen violence. Besides that, Inside offers a claustrophobic and ominous tone that makes it stand out and perfectly blends with its graphic content. One of those rare instances of an horror movie being actually capable to mix atmosphere and uneasiness to some mercyless violence and gore. Let's check it out.

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• The car-crash. The directors do surely know how to make you feel the sheer and senseless brutality of such a mundane tragedy in someone's life. As if the sight of a pregnant Sarah splattered with blood wasn't enough (you'll need to get used to it later in the movie though), just to make sure you know how bad the crash was they want you to see poor Matthieu crash with its head in the windshield and the wipers still moving on the destroyed glass. A simple yet haunting image.
• That awful old nurse smoking a cigarette, in the hospital, nearby Sarah, describing in details her first delivery, which resulted in the baby's death. The kind of person NO ONE wants to exchange some small talk with, let alone talking about such a topic when you are pregnant, and facing a heartbreaking depression after a car-crash you caused when driving took away your beloved's life. One has to wonder if she knew what Sarah has been through and then theorize on why she was behaving so terribly with our protagonist.
• Sarah's nightmare, that combines both Paranoia Fuel (all the paranoia and concern a pregnant woman may have about her delivery and her baby) and Nausea Fuel (a baby grothesquely coming out of your puking and bleeding mouth isn't a nice view, that's quiet obvious).
• Ok, now we can talk about La Femme. Béatrice Dalle gave a hell of a performance portraying this hellish living nightmare so much so we don't even know where to start. She's just unstoppable: nothing can interfere with her intent and she'll do everything to get what she wants, literally everything.
  • The doorbell ringing. You already know something nasty is going to happen the very moment you feel a deeper sense of uneasiness than the one you went through when watching A Clockwork Orange for the first time and then you were witnessing the home invasion scene.

The dark, gloomy and threatning enviroment are all alarms to what's going to unfold in that unkucky-ass house.

• Sarah, being aware she'd better not open the door to strangers in such an insulated area in the middle of the very night she'll have birth, tries to send the misterious woman away by making up excuses, but then whe shady woman reveals that she knows Sarah's lying... Now things are getting dangerous.
• La Femme punching the glass window in an attempt to both break it and intimidate Sarah. The cracking noise and the eerie appeal the cigarette light gives to Béatrice Dalle's face (almost resembling a Scary Flashlight Face) are the first actual sign of the danger Sarah is about to face. That woman is serious, she's not just some drunky troublemaker. She even lets Sarah take pictures of her without doing a movement. Is she sure all the pictures will turn out to be too dark to be useful to identify her? Or does she already know Sarah'll be dead by morning so she has little to care about the photos? Or is she just contemplating her prey?

• La Femme getting in the house without anyone noticing. The scariest part is how you really need a rewatch or maybe even more than one in order to spot her in the background. She's just a dark silhouette creeping through the entrance in a ghost-like fashion. Her later appearance behind the couch when Sarah falls asleep and the cat tries to warn her about the extrange presence right two inches away from her, then... The nightmare is getting closer, it's only a matter of time for her to strike.
• La Femme wildly sniffing the baby's clothes after hysterically taking them from their cellophane and hanger. Gosh that scene is unnerving. She's a literal predator exploring her prey's nest before attacking.
• The belly button scene... Those who saw this movie are split in two cathegories: the ones that can't help but touching their bellies whenever that moment is brought up, and the ones who lie.
  • Sarah and La Femme's first fight. As said in the introduction, the directors want you to feel all the impacts and injuries. Bonus point for La Femme pulling away an entire lock of Sarah's hair. Painful cringing sounds.
• La Femme meeting Sarah's employer. What does she have in mind exactly? Does she plan to kill him? That's why she asked him to stay, right? So despite her main goal, it looks like she somehow enjoies stabbing people to death. Or maybe she only wants to make sure no witness can report to have seen her in that house, but that's still a rather illogic move to do for her. Who knows. Only one thing is sure: the metallic sound of that huge pair of scissors snapping will make you unable to look at that mundane tool the same way.
  • Try to imagine what was going in Louise's mind when not only she found some strangers in her pregnant daughter's house in the middle of the night, but the last thing she was able to see before dying was her daughter sticking a giant needle in her throat thus killing her. You daughter has killed you and you have no idea of what's happening. What kind of Cruel and Unusual Death to face for that poor unaware woman.
    • Jean-Pierre's death. Try to be a boy and not feel broken by the way he's murdered. The moment he coughs blood and tries to get up only for La Femme to kill him for good first putting a pillow on his face and then stabbing it mercilessly is just another confirmation of how this movie won't sugarcoat anything. Anything.
• La Femme and Sarah's second fight, and the following scene of La Femme smoking a cigarette (one frame is shown above as this subsection's page image).
  • Just to prove yet again how lethal that woman is, here's you a Bait-and-Switch sequence where it looks like she's having her Pet the Dog scene by playing with Sarah's mindless cat. And then... She crushes the poor thing's head like a soda can. The Sickening "Crunch!" sound and the cat helplessly trying to meow will break the spirit of every cat lover and owner.
• La Femme impaling Sarah's hand on the door. Gee...
• The way the second policeman's head explodes when La Femme shoots at it. Only then you realize how downplayed gun shootings usually are in mainstream movies.
• The house falling into tarkness after La Femme messed with the electric meter in order to overpower the policeman. This happens shortly after another glimpse of that b*tch walking on the background without the other characters noticing.
• La Femme smelling and licking Sarah's face thinking she's asleep. This ambiguous moment was stated to reiterate La Femme's predator-like attitude towards Sarah. She sees her as a prey and she's somehow curious and wants to know her better, to know her scent...
  • Sarah's getting this chance to bite La Femme's lip off and regain advantage. Speaking about animalistic instincts, one can't help but cheer for Sarah but also cringe in horror.
• Sarah's threatning to stab her own baby in her tummy to take La Femme by surprise and prevent her from doing any other move. This doesn't help though, since...
  • ...La Femme proves yet again how much of a brutal killing machine she is by violently hitting Sarah on the head with a toaster.
• The impromptu-flamethrower scene. Once again, you can't help but cheer for Sarah's victory and to enjoy the sight of La Femme being completely overpowered for the first and last time in the movie. The shot of the flames covering Béatrice Dalle's face and charring it make this moment an utterly hellish sight to look at though.
• The Impromptu Tracheotomy. Someone could make a drinking game out of all the times we talked about audience cringing in pain while watching this movie. That said, this moment is probably one of the most intense (although not as intense as the infamous ending).
• The third policeman revealing to be Not Quite Dead and brutally hitting Sarah's tummy with his truncheon and making her internal liquids splash on the floor. Both horrifying to look at and Nausea Fuel.
  • Plus, La Femme killing the policeman for good. We should have got used to this b*tch stabbing and killing people, but we are never that ready to witness such scenes.
• And then... The impromptu Caesarean section performed on the stairs. Blood flowing like water in the Niagara Falls, Sarah's atrocious screams, La Femme grothesquely trying to keep her calm as if she's her mother or a doctor, and the pair of scissors being pushed in Sarah's tummy. As if that wasn't enough, we also see La Femme putting her blood-splattered hands (both figurately and literally) in the belly in order to take the baby. We can only leave to our darkest nightmares how the baby must have been affected by the ordeal. Actually, we don't even know if the baby survived at all. There was supposed to be an epilogue with Sarah's daughter visiting the house years after that tragic night, but it was scrapped, so the baby's fate is left to the audience's immagination.