‘Inside’ Movie Review: Willem Dafoe Gets Trapped in a Stuffy Thriller

Inside is a single-location dramatic thriller that taps into claustrophobia. Director Vasilis Katsoupis and screenwriter Ben Hopkins rely on the talents of Willem Dafoe to carry what’s essentially a one-man show. Despite an assuredly solid performance, Inside is a tepid film that finds moments of tension, but it doesn’t quite push itself as much as it needs to.

‘Inside’ finds a high-end art thief trapped

Nemo (Dafoe) is a high-end art thief with his eyes set on a huge hit in a New York penthouse. His team did their homework, and they have the perfect plan to get in, get out, and score millions of dollars in the process. However, the heist doesn’t go according to plan, as the alarms sound off and lock him inside the expensive, modern home.

Abandoned by his team, Nemo finds himself locked inside with nothing but priceless art pieces. With no sign of help or the authorities coming any time soon, Nemo must find a way to use his limited resources to his advantage to survive until he can escape. The longer he spends within these walls, the more his sanity begins to slip through his fingers.

Art, morality, and survival

Inside depicts the site of Nemo’s land of opportunity as his prison. Ordinarily, the police would apprehend the thief in such a situation, but instead, he’s simply trapped within the very space he worked so hard to break into. The closest thing Nemo has to human interaction is a refrigerator with verbal alerts and the building’s unreachable staff on the security cameras. As a result, he falls even deeper into his own psyche, with his chances for survival progressively slimming.

Hopkins’ screenplay unloads commentary on the world of art, as a creator robs a collector. The dynamic between creation and destruction is constantly at play, forcing Nemo to reflect on his own connection to this duality. He wonders if his lifelong perspective on it makes him a bad person, bringing morality into the criminal’s arc from the very first frame.

The question of longevity haunts Inside, as Nemo wrestles with short- and long-term satisfaction. “Cats die. Music fades. But art is for keeps,” the thief says in a voice-over narration. His sense of unbearable loneliness in the penthouse is filled to the brim with criticisms of the art world and how it relates back to human interaction and even a form of religiosity. Nemo is fighting for his physical survival, but he’s simultaneously in the midst of grappling with a psychological one.

‘Inside’ is a subdued one-man show

Katsoupis works with a relatively small space in Inside, with the majority of the runtime fitting within only a couple of rooms. Thorsten Sabel’s production design brings this wealthy penthouse to life, while Frederik Van de Moortel’s score of strings fills the picture with tremendous dread. This single-location thriller doesn’t work with much visual variance, yet Katsoupis successfully captures it in a way that shifts over the course of the film.

Dafoe is left to do much of the heavy lifting without co-stars to regularly interact with. Even so, he turns in a worthwhile performance that increasingly depicts Nemo’s desperation for survival and some introspection. However, Hopkins’ screenplay keeps the perspective character shrouded in mystery. The audience must take him at face value because we only exist with him in the present, learning very little about his life outside of the penthouse. There isn’t a whole lot to latch onto, which makes it difficult to care about his fate.

Inside is a one-note thriller about art, morality, and survival that only examines its themes and lead character on the surface. There are moments of tension sprinkled throughout, and it’s never boring, but they don’t lead anywhere. Dafoe does what he can with the material that, unfortunately, ends on a whimper.

Inside locks itself into theaters on March 17.