It’s What’s Inside review
Netflix delivers body swapping mayhem in It’s What’s Inside.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
It’s What’s Inside
Directed by Greg Jardin
Written by Greg Jardin
Starring Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Gavin Leatherwood, Nina Bloomgarden, Alycia Debnam-Carey and Reina Hardesty
It’s What’s Inside Review
Perhaps the wildest movie of the year dropped on Netflix last week. If you’re a fan of body swap movies (and who isn’t) …It’s What’s Inside is like Freaky Friday on bath salts. This is a mind-bending story that might make your brain hurt from time to time…but is worth the headache. The second half is vastly superior to the first half…but that second half is well worth getting to. A complimentary beginning to the piece would have left us discussing an instant classic. Instead, we’re left with a fun ride without enough emotional connection to its characters. Which, actually, is the cause of some of the headaches.
A group of friends gather for a pre-wedding party. When prodigal friend Forbes (David Thompson) arrives with a game fueled by cutting edge technology…things go off the rails. His machine lets you swap bodies. A fun game of “guess who” quickly turns deadly and leaves the surviving attendees in way over the heads that don’t belong to them.
The story begins with the relationship between Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) and Cyrus (Shelby). They’re going through a rough patch which will be further explored throughout It’s What’s Inside. Aside from some reveals about Forbes’s backstory…this is about as much character time as we get with the group before faces begin to change. It’s difficult to follow who is who when you don’t have a good grasp on who they were to begin with. We learn surface level stuff, sure…but the movie throws so many characters at you that swapping them around almost immediately creates said headaches.
Fun headaches, to be fair. It just feels unfair to ask us to play that game of who’s who when we know so little. The story does reveal more and more about these people…but they’re wearing someone else’s skin for a lot of that time. When you’re still trying to pin down names…imagine having to attach them to a cast of revolving faces. The first half of It’s What’s Inside is what prevents it from achieving its full potential. A stronger commitment to, or better job executing, character introductions would have made the second half even more effective.
With that out of the way, the second half of It’s What’s Inside is awesome anyway. After a couple rounds of people spending time in someone else’s body…the story drops the hammer. Two of the body swapped friends die an accidental death. For those keeping track…that’s two dead bodies with two different, equally dead, minds inside them. Two of the survivors are looking at bodies they can’t get into. Two of the living bodies have no way of reuniting with their actual brains. I use brains as a shortcut for however you want to describe what goes into a person during a body swap. Either way, Vice Versa could never.
From that point on It’s What’s Inside ratchets up the fun. Twists, turns, alliances and sabotage. It provides a ticking clock by calling the police under the guise that the deaths were a murder…leaving whoever ends up in the blamed body screwed when time is up. The problems extend far beyond the two people doomed to live out the rest of their lives in different bodies. Not everyone is on board with switching back. Hence the alliances and sabotage.
It’s What’s Inside has a clever trick to help us understand who is in each body. It drapes scenes in red as they play out…allowing us to see the face of the person inside instead of who they are inhabiting. Again, a better understanding of these characters would have helped more…but it’s a smart storytelling trick anyway.
It’s What’s Inside is so much fun by the end that it’s easy to forgive what it doesn’t fully accomplish beforehand. Yes, the experience could have been deeper…felt more complete. But that doesn’t change how exciting it is to watch the final act play out. It even saves a few twists for after things are as settled as they’re going to be. I’d like to say that It’s What’s Inside is a joy from start to finish. That would be inaccurate. But it is a joy from about the midway point to finish. And that’s, literally, not half bad.
Scare Value
Writer/director Greg Jardin finds a new angle on the body swap story…turning it into a wild acid trip. It can be hard to keep track of everything…even with a clever visual cue…but that’s all part of the fun. When the party turns deadly, It’s What’s Inside really hits its stride. A stronger first act that let us get to know all the game’s participants a little better would have elevated it to true greatness.
3.5/5
It’s What’s Inside Link
Streaming on Netflix
