Inside

Released 2023. Director: Vasilis Katsoupis

THERE'S NOTHING COMPLICATED ABOUT THE PLOT OF INSIDE. Let me summarise it in a sentence: a burglar is stuck in a high-security penthouse. That's it. But what the story is really about, now that may not be so straightforward.

Willem Dafoe is the burglar Nemo, known as No. 2 on his walkie-talkie with his unseen accomplice No. 3 on the outside. Dressed in a worker’s overalls and armed with the right tools, he breaks into the skyscraper residence of a wealthy art collector planning to leave with a few paintings by Egon Schiele. Before he could complete his mission, an electrical fault triggers the locks and cuts all access. The front door is impregnable and the glass windows overlooking Manhattan are shatterproof. Knowing their heist is botched, No.3 drops off and abandons No.2 to his own devices.

With the owner being away, Nemo doesn’t need to worry about getting caught anytime soon. But he'd never have imagined he’ll end up completely sealed in not just for a few hours, but days that stretch into weeks that by the time the movie ends, blends into an endless block of time spent in solitary confinement.

Nemo’s ordeal begins as a challenge in physical survival. The short-circuited HVAC system alternately heats and chills the apartment to extreme ends. Nemo endures a swing from sweltering temperatures to freezing conditions, sweating and shivering through four seasons in one day. The small amount of tinned food in the sparsely stocked kitchen quickly runs out and a starving Nemo resorts to eating fish from the aquarium. Non-working plumbing means the taps are not working and when the bottles run out, Will slurps the last bits of moisture in a decommissioned freezer in desperation. If not for the timer-controlled sprinklers in the indoor courtyard, Nemo would’ve died of thirst.

Time and again rescue appears so close when the building’s cleaning lady comes round to vacuum the hallway right outside the front door. On the security screen Nemo sees her approaching and he pounds on the door, yelling and kicking but the insulation is too good, not helped by the fact that the cleaner is always plugged into her headphones.

This is a one-man, one-location movie with a few peripheral characters seen only on security monitors but Willem Dafoe is the breed of actors who know how to command the scene all by himself (much like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Tom Hardy in Locke and Ryan Reynolds in Buried). The oft-underrated Dafoe is riveting as a prisoner with an existential crisis. He’s distressed and angry but he never gives up on finding a way out of this gilded glass cage. Director Vasilis Katsoupis loves to point his camera so close to Dafoe as if leaning in for a whisper. We see the lines on his face, the fatigue written all over, and the heaviness in his eyes struggling for a way to get out alive.

The penthouse itself is more than just a setting. The modern interiors and the architectural flourish make this jail cell more than mere space. The artworks on display bring another angle to the story. Nemo is first seduced by art when his intention is to steal. Then he’s defeated by art when he falls victim to his own crime. Finally, he’s liberated by art.

The last point is made clear when Nemo begins to create his own art driven by the growing madness and declining mental state. The ‘black hole’ he paints on a wall is an enigma ripe for interpretation of his mindset. Does he feel like he’s sinking into a dark abyss? Is this a visualisation of his crumbling sanity? In his continuous attempt to free himself, Nemo breaks apart furniture pieces and builds a tower to reach the double-storey high skylight. Take a step back and the assembly could conceivably be viewed as an abstract art installation. When Nemo falls and breaks his leg, the artist literally suffers for his art.

If only the circumstances were different, Nemo could be spending time at an art gallery admiring the works of a renowned painter. The place is full of visual creativity but the irony is he’s surrounded by very expensive art with absolutely no value to him.

You’d think that this high-tech gallery-home housing treasured paintings would be wired up to a degree of the highest level of sophistication. Strange things is, when the security alarm goes off, nobody comes to check. Later when Nemo manages to set off the fire alarm and floods the place, again it doesn’t appear to trigger any alert. Nobody responds. Could it be that the whole experience is an installation? Nemo being No.2 with an accomplice No. 3, who is No. 1 and is he the mastermind of a freak show on human endurance?

It’d seem that anything can be turned into some kind of art form, including survival and jailbreak. Art can be a panacea, and in the case of a robber caught on the brink of insanity and death, it can also free the body and mind. Or maybe the story is simply about a trapped man's desperate attempts to break free.

Click image above to view trailer. New window will open.