Nemo (Willem Dafoe) enters an elaborately manicured, high-rise apartment of a wealthy artist with only two things on his mind; snag the self-portrait worth millions and escape.  When his accomplice, Number 3 (Andrew Blumenthal) triggers the alarm system in an attempt to disarm it for Nemo’s exit, he finds himself stranded and alone.  Minutes, turn to hours, turn to days, and Nemo works tirelessly to create an alternate escape route for himself, but he slowly begins to lose his own mind in the process. 

Vasilis Katsoupis directs Inside for Focus Features with an additional Story By credit. Ben Hopkins pens the script for the 105-minute descent into madness; an edgy and highly stylized reaction to the Covid 19 lockdowns.  Shot by Steve Annis, the film takes place largely in a single location – a sprawling high-rise apartment that works well for the film but looks like an absolutely miserable place to live.  The entire set, with art direction led by Cedric Engelbrecht, is overflowing with intermingled modern art influences, creating the perfect environment for Nemo to test his skills and wits in an attempt to escape, but never have a moment of comfort or security. 

Katsoupis wastes no time in setting the bare stage for his film; once Nemo realizes that the self-portrait has been moved, he grabs what art he can to salvage the heist and makes his way to the exit.  With the plan compromised, Number 3 leaves to save himself and now there is only one thing left to do.  Escape.  With the inclusion of some additional characters seen on the CCTV security footage and some fever dreams, it is not a pure one-hander, but there is no denying that the film lives and dies on Dafoe’s shoulders.  It is a carefully calibrated and manic performance which the veteran actor has peppered his career with, so it feels like an inspired choice, but the film is too broad to make it a signature role.  In that way, the film could take on a vastly different feel had someone like Robert Pattinson or Adam Driver taken the lead role on the younger end of the spectrum, or a Denzel Washington caliber actor to stick with someone in Dafoe’s same age range.  That the film makes no comment on Nemo’s age – or his motivation for the heist for that matter – yet Annis’ camera is all-too-eager to capture Dafoe’s worn and beaten-down body, is a major indication of the meandering and lackadaisical approach to the story.   

The overall uncertainty of purpose looms heavily over the entire film.  It is clearly trying to say something but its message never quite comes to fruition.  In addition to the concept of age and purpose as well as the loneliness and insanity that beset our global society as we locked down for Covid in 2020, Inside also seems like it wants to spark a conversation – or at least highlight some mental musings – about wealth, technology, and most obviously, art.  With the Mensa-level Smart Home devices that work against Nemo oscillating between extreme temperatures, blasting the Macarena if the fridge is open too long, and denying the prisoner access to water, Inside thankfully never teeters into the realm of a murder house but rather uses the technology as further obstacles that Nemo needs to overcome.  By and large, he MacGyvers his way through the film as he builds a ladder to the sunroof, but Katsoupis directs our attention away from this action more often than not, and instead shows us the various pieces of obscure art displayed across the abode or the mess which Nemo has left in his struggle for survival.  The artwork is immediately beguiling given its nature, and because of that it all hints at a larger meaning that ultimately evades its audiences because there is no true thematic throughline in the film.  Katsoupis weaponizes the ambiguity associated with modern art against his audiences to lend credence to his film, but as Nemo’s resources begin to dwindle, so does the charm of the film and the goodwill of audiences, and despite these broad gestures, we know there is nothing behind the curtain and it all signifies nothing. 

If there is one sliver of a theme that works its way from start to finish, it is that “art is for keeps.” Within the context of the film, it tries to posit that art is sacred, something that connects us to one another, but the film’s handling of art starts to muddy that message and if it is supposed to be ironic, it is not well throughout out enough to prove itself. High above the city, in a closed-off sanctuary, art is being hoarded, driving up its value to astronomical limits while preventing the people it is supposed to connect from seeing it. This treatment turns the sentimental reading that art is eternal into a more selfish message that art is to be claimed and owned. Nemo himself even has this approach, retaining his childhood sketchbook after all these years, and now, he never shows the intention to “free” the pieces he sought in the heist, delivering them to the masses. The focus was always on the value of the pieces, yet this definition of art is clearly only applied to the tangible realm as Nemo talks about how music can be lent and discs discarded. 

Inside is a fully realized creative vision of a not-so-fully developed story. We are constantly waiting for the bottom to give out, a moment that never truly comes, and instead ends on an ambiguous and strangely optimistic note. Teasing out the next few seconds of the narrative and it is clearly not a hopeful story and Nemo remains just as much trapped as he is freed, but what is the point of this whole experiment?  Katsoupis certainly does not seem to know and is hopeful that the world he builds is enough for audiences to connect to the film, but it all rings hollow. Simply put, it is not a feature-length concept and it crumbles under the weight of the runtime. Dafoe lends himself fully to the idea, however, and can keep us engaged far longer than we should be, but even the performance begins to struggle in the later throws of the narrative. For only his second feature and first narrative endeavor, Katsoupis is a little gratuitous and unrefined but clearly, he is an artist with a vision and a sense of his own personal purpose so it will be interesting to see how his career develops moving forward from this.