Ah, Christmas. A time for warmth, family, togetherness—and in the case of Inside (2016), awkward home invasions, half-baked gore, and more screaming than a YouTube reaction channel. Directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas, this English-language remake of the 2007 French horror classic somehow manages to take one of the most brutal, disturbing films ever made and turn it into a tepid Lifetime thriller with a body count. It’s as if someone said, “What if we remade Inside but took out all the tension, character, and purpose?” And then, somehow, everyone involved said, “Brilliant!”
To say this film is disappointing is like saying the Titanic had a minor leak. It’s not just bad—it’s confusingly bad. It’s a movie about childbirth that somehow has no life in it.
The Premise: Pregnant Woman vs. Plot Hole
The plot, in theory, sounds promising—if you haven’t seen the far superior French version. Sarah Clarke (Rachel Nichols), a pregnant woman who’s recently lost her husband in a car accident, spends Christmas Eve alone, grieving and waiting for the baby that’s due the next day. Enter Laura Harring as “The Woman,” a mysterious intruder who breaks into Sarah’s home, intent on stealing her unborn child like some kind of homicidal Santa.
It’s a setup ripe for horror: the vulnerability of pregnancy, the terror of intrusion, the primal desperation of motherhood. And yet Inside handles it all with the emotional range of a snow globe. The original film made your stomach turn; this one just makes your eyes roll.
Rachel Nichols Deserves Better (and So Do We)
Let’s get one thing straight: Rachel Nichols does her best. She plays Sarah with the weary panic of someone who’s been handed this script and told, “Try to act scared, but not too scared, because we’re aiming for PG-13 levels of trauma.”
Nichols spends much of the movie whispering, crying, or holding her belly in existential disbelief—understandable reactions to both her on-screen situation and the screenplay. Every scene asks her to balance pathos and terror, but the direction is so flat it might as well have been shot on an iPhone set to “low energy.”
The film’s idea of suspense is Nichols staring blankly at a shadow while the soundtrack hums ominously, as if even the music isn’t sure what it’s supposed to be doing.
Laura Harring: Psycho or Just Bored?
Then there’s Laura Harring, the intruder herself—ostensibly our villain, but more often just a well-dressed nuisance. In the French original, Béatrice Dalle’s performance was unhinged, primal, and horrifyingly human. Here, Harring floats through the movie like she’s auditioning for a perfume commercial called Eau de Resentment.
Her line delivery is stilted, her menace undercut by random bouts of quiet whispering, and her motives feel like they were cobbled together from a Hallmark Christmas special. “She lost her baby and now wants someone else’s!” might work as a horror premise, but it’s handled with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the placenta.
She’s not frightening—she’s annoying. You don’t want her to be stopped; you want her to be edited out.
Christmas Spirit? More Like Christmas Flatline.
If there’s one thing Inside wants you to remember, it’s that this takes place on Christmas Eve. Why? Because nothing screams “holiday horror” like a woman being stalked in her own home while we occasionally glimpse tinsel in the background.
The film tries to inject seasonal irony—birth, rebirth, etc.—but ends up feeling like a slasher that wandered out of a Hallmark movie marathon. There are carols faintly playing in the distance, soft snow outside, and inside? Just 90 minutes of illogical violence and poor lighting.
It’s festive in the same way a burnt turkey is “dinner.”
The Gore: Sanitized for Your Disinterest
The 2007 Inside was infamous for its unflinching brutality. It was a cinematic gut punch, an experience that left audiences shaken, repulsed, and weirdly impressed by how far it dared to go. The 2016 remake, however, seems terrified of upsetting anyone.
Instead of shocking gore, we get carefully framed “implied violence,” which is horror shorthand for “we ran out of budget for fake blood.” There are stabbings, sure—but they’re filmed with all the intensity of a cooking tutorial. Even when people die (and they do, frequently), the camera cuts away like it’s shielding your delicate sensibilities.
It’s as if the director watched the original through a pair of oven mitts.
The Supporting Cast: Walking Corpses Without the Makeup
Every other character in this film seems to have been written by someone who’s never met a human being. The neighbors, the police officers, the random bystanders—all of them show up just long enough to die stupidly.
Take Isaac, Sarah’s neighbor, who exists purely to make you shout “Don’t go in the house!” at your TV like an exhausted parent. Or the police officers who stop by twice, only to become the most incompetent casualties in cinematic history.
By the time the third act hits, it’s less a horror movie and more a parade of morons wandering into a blender.
Logic? Never Heard of It.
Plot holes abound. Sarah’s phone is destroyed, but her neighbor’s isn’t. The intruder seems to teleport around the house like she’s got a backstage pass to the editing room. Sarah is nine months pregnant, yet still manages to engage in prolonged, acrobatic fight sequences that would make an Olympic gymnast blush.
The killer injects Sarah with oxytocin to induce labor, because apparently, she also moonlights as a midwife. The final confrontation happens on top of a swimming pool cover (because why not?), where Sarah literally gives birth on the pool while the villain drowns beneath her. Symbolism? Sure. Ridiculous? Absolutely.
It’s like the filmmakers were desperate to recreate the shocking final birth scene from the French version—but instead of horror, they accidentally filmed a cursed episode of Water Birth for Beginners.
The Direction: Tension by Accident
Miguel Ángel Vivas has directed decent thrillers before (Kidnapped being one), but here his vision seems to have evaporated somewhere between “remake” and “why bother.” The cinematography is technically competent—if you enjoy looking at shadows and poorly lit hallways—but there’s no rhythm, no escalation, no sense of claustrophobia.
Every shot feels disconnected, like a visual shrug. Even the editing manages to make moments of violence less impactful. You can almost feel the original film screaming from its grave, “I was trying to say something!”
The Ending: Birth of a Franchise Nobody Wanted
The film limps toward its conclusion, trying desperately to summon emotion as Sarah gives birth on a half-submerged pool cover while police lights flash in the distance. It’s meant to be cathartic, but by that point, you’re mostly just grateful it’s over.
Sarah survives. The baby survives. The villain drowns. Everyone’s miserable, including the audience. The police show up just in time to do absolutely nothing, as is tradition.
The final shot—a drenched, exhausted Sarah clutching her newborn—should have been haunting. Instead, it feels like an accidental metaphor for the movie itself: painful, soggy, and desperately gasping for meaning.
Final Verdict: 2/10 — Dead on Arrival
Inside (2016) is a film that takes everything sharp, shocking, and fearless about the original and replaces it with mediocrity, awkwardness, and bad acoustics. It’s the cinematic equivalent of microwaving a gourmet meal: technically the same ingredients, utterly devoid of flavor.
The acting’s fine, the lighting’s dim, and the scares are practically nonexistent. Even the unborn child looks like it’s trying to escape the movie.
If you want to experience real terror, don’t bother watching Inside. Just imagine explaining to a diehard horror fan that you willingly watched the remake instead of the original.
It’s not scary. It’s not stylish. It’s not even bad enough to be fun. It’s just… there.
And in horror, “just there” is the worst fate of all.
