Invasion of the Body Switchers
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
9/25/2024—As the Northern Hemisphere’s transitioned into autumn I’ll need to note to all present and future readers of Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark that my wife, Nina, and I have transitioned into our mid-70s which puts us in the autumn of our years too (winter’s a long way off we’re convinced), which means it’s now taking us longer to get do our daily tasks so some changes are now necessary; for me that means putting more time into meals—shopping/preparation—as time management requires me to cut down on the weekly hours I’ve been devoting to this blog. There will still be postings on a weekly basis (most of the time), but the reviews will need to be considerably shorter, maybe with fewer Musical Metaphors if trying to figure out what to use becomes too much of a challenge. I’ll focus on successfully getting to the point in what I write, but extra details and tangents will have to be curtailed. (Damn!) Comments on this revised format are always welcomed.
It's What's Inside (Greg Jardin) rated R 105 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
While searching through streaming options for something to explore this week I was intrigued by local San Francisco-area critic Randy Myers' comments about It’s What’s Inside—“Jardin milks the scenario for every creative ounce it’s worth and keeps the audience off-kilter throughout (even camera angles refuse to conform to the norms)”—even though another local reviewer, Carla Meyer, wasn’t so impressed—“[…] confusing storylines involving vapid characters eclipse the previous magic generated by swirling cameras, split screens and black-and-white still images animated in fascinating ways.”—but I decided to watch it anyway (their reactions echo the barely-CCAL-support, with Rotten Tomatoes positives of 80% notably contrasted to the Metacritic sourpuss response of a considerably-less-enthusiastic 57% average score); I’m glad I did choose to watch because this is a fascinating concept for a film, even if it does get confusing enough at times as to be hard to follow for reasons I’ll attempt to explain. We start with a series of abstract-like images under the opening credits (later we get lots of cinematic tricks like those split-screens, iris shots, many quick edits, etc.), then we see Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey) with her Instagram videos as she encourages her followers to try new things. One of those followers is her friend Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) who’s up for a new version of sex with her not-so-compliant (despite his denials) boyfriend, Cyrus (James Morosini), who seems to prefer masturbating to porno videos when he thinks she’s gone off on a run.
Then we get to meet most of the rest of this cast-cluster as they gather at groom-to-be Reuben’s (Devon Terrell) mansion (left to him by his successful artist mother, who made some wicked—actually, deadly—sculptures) for a big party before the wedding tomorrow (we never see the bride-to-be who’s surely thankful she wasn’t part of this intended-fun-gone-horribly-wrong event). In addition to Reuben, Shelby, Cyrus, and Nikki, we also find Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), and Brooke (Reina Hardesty), then learn Forbes (David W. Thompson) was also invited even though they haven’t seen him in a long time after he brought his high-school sister, Beatrice (Madison Davenport), to a college party which resulted in Forbes being expelled, Beatrice having a nervous breakdown leading to her lengthy institutionalization. Surprisingly, Forbes shows up, bringing along a device developed by him and his techie-associates that allows a person’s consciousness (some would say their “soul”; more on that later) to be transferred into another body.
Despite initial reluctance on the part of some partiers, they all agree to indulge in the body-swap game where the goal is to identify who is now in someone else’s body; if the guess is correct then a Polaroid photo of the “inner” person is pinned to the “outer” person’s body so everyone can better get a handle on the reality that, for example, you may think you’re talking to Nikki, because you know what she looks like, but really you’re interacting with Shelby, despite whatever she says coming out in Nikki’s voice. (In Meyer’s review she notes the allusion here to Face/Off [John Woo, 1997] where characters played by Nicholas Cage and John Travolta can become confusing to viewers because these guys have plastic surgery to switch faces, so the Travolta man [Sean Archer] is still Travolta but you can get lost in that because the face you see talking is Cage’s [and vice versa].) In It’s What’s Inside, though, the situations are more complex because body and voice belong, again as an example, to Forbes but the inner-consciousness is actually Cyrus so when he’s talking to Shelby in Nikki’s body she begins to understand he’d prefer to be with Nikki—or at least have her look like Nikki which is what she ultimately accuses him of, despite those Cyrus-denials. After the first round of this unsettling game, actual personalities are returned to their own bodies, but then they go into round two which leads to unforeseen, then terrible, results for some of the switchers; I’ll get into a little of what happens in my upcoming Spoiler comments, but if you want more details on the full results of these switcheroos I’ll refer you to this site, which goes into considerably more plot details.
⇒Cyrus, in Forbes’ body, goes into a panic, demands they call the game to a halt, all back to their own bodies; however, before that can happen tragedy strikes. Reuben (in Dennis’ body) proves himself to be complexly-unfaithful to his bride-of-tomorrow by having sex on a small balcony with Brooke (who’s in Maya’s body); horribly, though, the balcony collapses, killing them both. Dennis, in Cyrus’s body, gets angry, calls the police (as if he’s Cyrus), “confesses” he’s responsible for the deaths of whom would appear to be Dennis and Maya, at which point chaos begins to rein as Forbes tries to leave but is stopped by Nikki, then Shelby refuses the swap-back, preferring to remain in Nikki’s body, but the actual Nikki hits Shelby with a peanut-butter-allergy-attack, refusing to give her the needed EpiPen antidote unless all the bodies go back to normal (what becomes of Reuben and Brooke’s consciousnesses in their now-dead borrowed bodies I’m not clear on at all), although that return only happens with Cyrus and Shelby. The police arrive, arrest Cyrus, but when Shelby visits him in jail she refuses to help clear him of his accused crimes (and I’m sure he’ll have a hell of a time trying to explain it all to the legal system). The next day Beatrice shows up, talks with Dennis who’s now in Forbes’s body, reveals she’s actually Forbes because the siblings did a body-swap so she (as Forbes, although no one else knew the truth) took the device to the party, pretended to be Forbes throughout the night, then disappeared with the device after transferring herself into Nikki’s body.⇐
I admit you can’t get a good sense of what happens in this weird film without reading the Spoiler material (and even then you’d likely need to also read the Wikipedia article to fully put it all together), so you might not be able to get a clear sense of whether you’d want to watch this or not—and, to add a further complication, if you do expose yourself to the complete details you won’t be able to get the full impact of the unspooling-narrative if you know what’s coming (but even the Spoilers won’t clarify what becomes of Dennis-body/Reuben-soul, Maya body/Brooke soul, unless I’m completely missing an explanation). So, I’ll leave it up to you (as usual) as to whether to watch this one on Netflix or not. (Not a subscriber? You’d need to pay $6.99 with ads, $15.49 without for at least 1 month, but in those days you’d also have access to everything else in their vast collection).
Despite the confusions (to me, at least), I did find this film to be an intriguing concept (which led me to write much more than I originally intended to, as noted in my opening “autumn” comments) with solid acting throughout as each character has to establish an identity for themselves, then play some trickery with the others once the body-swaps have occurred to extend the game so the new “person” won’t be immediately obvious to the rest of the crowd—and the ending comes as a complete shock, which might be enough to justify wading through the rest of these happenings just to get to it. While this film might be considered sci-fi because of the crucial persona-swapping device and its complicated results, I’d go more along with those who say it’s a drama-horror mix due to the realignment of what could easily be called the characters’ souls, their inner-essences, which gets us into the realm of humans inserting themselves into the territory supposed to be only the domain of God as explored so chillingly in horror classics like Frankenstein (Mary Shelly, 1818), the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886), and myriad movies such as The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986) inspired by these books/other similar stories pushing our human limits.
Disaster strikes all of these characters due to their curiosity about aspects of existence that are implied should be left undisturbed—except for Beatrice who held this group accountable for the years of misery in her life, leading her to make her own disasters against them—so we’ve got a clear warning here about resisting temptation (another religious theme active in true horror movies of the supernatural type—more so than in psychological horror stories which don’t get into this realm of the divine as such) for the need of protection of your own soul, or at least that’s one way to try to clarify all that’s going on here; another attempt at explaining the film’s ending can be found in this video (5:10), but it’s really more recitation than explanation. Therefore, as I take (accurately or not) this narrative-ambiguity on the part of the filmmakers to be their underlying intention, I’ll be more ambiguous than usual (if that’s possible) with my choice of a Musical Metaphor to bring all of this ramble to closure, the Santana instrumental “Soul Sacrifice” performance from the 1969 Woodstock Festival (song found on the 1969 Santana album) as captured on film in the magnificent Woodstock documentary (Michael Wadleigh, 1970) found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBG6IaSQC pU (what's in this clip looks much better in the original doc). Yes, I know, this tune has nothing to do with the film, but if Jardin could mess around as he pleased with his work so can I mess around with mine, especially with the marvelous graphics of how this musical masterpiece is presented on film (and … I just felt like seeing it again, plus many people in … Inside make their own “soul sacrifices,” despite not going in with that intention). Even if you don’t find interest in the (literal) mind-games of It’s What’s Inside, I hope you’ll still appreciate this musical highlight from a unique yesteryear event.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
(1) IMDb staff picks for October 2024 (most of these aren’t that interesting to me, but you might find them to worth your time); (2) New and upcoming horror movies and shows; (3) Joker: Folie à Deux has poor domestic opening; yet, you find (4) "Joker 2" makes big bucks internationally.
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