The Inside (2012)

Director: Eoin C. Macken

Cast: Tereza Srbová, Kellie Blaise, Siobhán Cullen

Synopsis: A group of girls are terrorised by violent vagrants before succumbing to a horrific supernatural evil.

The found footage genre might have suffered yet another knife wound to the heart had anyone noticed the release of Eoin Macken’s cheap horror flick The Inside, but the film was released with little fanfare or meaningful theatrical distribution before finding its way to DVD bargain bins and late night screenings on minor satellite channels.   Reviews for The Inside are largely negative – and deservedly so, it has to be said – but a late 20-minute sequence shot in the labyrinthine catacombs of the derelict building in which a group of bitchy Dublin girlfriends unaccountably choose to hold a 21^st birthday party illustrates just how much better it might have been had Macken not taken the concept of handheld footage to ridiculous extremes – before bizarrely abandoning it completely.

Unfortunately, Macken’s violently mobile camera reduces much of what we see to a meaningless jumble which, while it might be hyper-realistic, does nothing but induce headaches in its increasingly frustrated audience.   The girls’ party is gate-crashed by a trio of violent vagrants intent on abuse and rape, but just as they’re getting down to business some paranormal presence makes itself known, prompting a prolonged screechy scream-fest as the hysterical girls take flight through darkened corridors and windowless rooms.   The film works hard to create an intense, claustrophobic atmosphere, but is defeated before it really gets going by the obnoxious nature of the girls prior to the attacks, and the difficulty we have in making out what’s going on.

Although the cinematic value of found-footage movies is questionable, a filmmaker who decides to go down that road, should at least be consistent.   Not only does Macken deviate from the genre by using non-diegetic music to build atmosphere, he also abandons the found-footage device completely for a poorly-conceived framing story which see the finder of the video camera on which the incidents were recorded doing what no other human would do by venturing into the building alone to check it out.

(Reviewed 13th May 2016)