[Editorial] 12 Ghouls of Christmas: Why Is Inside (2007) So Appealing?

*Spoilers ahead for Inside*

No film better epitomizes the spirit of Christmas than Inside (À l'intérieur) (2007), a movie about a widowed pregnant woman who is stalked by a mysterious intruder hellbent on removing and kidnapping her baby on Christmas Eve. Did I say the spirit of Christmas? I meant the spirit of the New French Extremity. 

Similar to the reverse chronology of Gasper Noe's film Irreversible (2002), another film   belonging to the New French Extremity movement, Inside starts with death and ends with birth. Sarah is a young pregnant woman who has lost her husband in a gruesome car accident. On Christmas Eve, she tells her loved ones, "I don't give a shit about Christmas. I'd rather be alone." Unfortunately, she doesn't get her Christmas wish. The unnamed home invader (simply called The Woman in the film's credits) breaks into Sarah's home, and the two women battle for Sarah's unborn baby. 

What exactly is The Woman's motive? She reveals that she was driving the other car in the accident that took the life of Sarah's husband. The Woman was pregnant at the time of the accident and lost her baby as a result of the collision with Sarah's car. The Woman is adhering strictly to the idea of "an eye for an eye." The car crash with Sarah caused her to lose her own baby, thus, she now deserves Sarah's baby. (Inside also brings this retaliatory principle to life quite vividly: several of Sarah's potential rescuers wind up stabbed in the eye, including Sarah's own mother.)

Putting aside the complex question of why women watch horror movies in which women are often brutalized and tormented, why is Inside especially appealing? It's a film about a young woman who has already suffered a tremendous loss and must fight for the life of her unborn baby when they're both highly vulnerable. 

Perhaps it's because (unlike most horror films), the predator in Inside is also a woman, and The Woman has suffered a devastating loss, too. She acknowledges that she and Sarah both went through hell after the accident, and tells the pregnant woman, "I know the birth will save us." There is a huge gulf between a more typical male horror movie villain stalking and murdering a female, and a woman who is driven mad by grief and so obsessed with wanting a baby that she'll stalk and murder another woman. 

Béatrice Dalle, who also stars in Claire Denis's New French Extremity standout Trouble Every Day, is striking as she silently stalks Sarah, lighting up cigarettes that illuminate her angular face and its dark makeup. Meanwhile, as the sullen photographer Sarah, Alysson Paradis manages to convey her psychological pain through only a few spoken words. They're both deeply wounded women who have suffered a shared trauma. However, their responses to the trauma are wildly different: While Sarah retreats and does her best to alienate her loved ones, The Woman forms a plan to achieve her ultimate goal: motherhood. 

Heightening the tension between them, Sarah and The Woman continuously act as foils for one another. It is as simple as Sarah wearing a short white nightgown through most of their scenes together, conveying innocence, while The Woman wears a long black dress, complete with a corset and gloves. It is as extreme as Sarah innocently knitting in her living room, unaware that The Woman will stab several people with Sarah's knitting needle throughout the course of their bloody Christmas Eve together. One of the most frightening contrasts occurs when The Woman tries to destroy the bathroom door to get to Sarah, who is hiding inside, right before Sarah herself takes a piece of the shattered bathroom mirror and tries to escape from the bathroom. 

Inside is without a doubt one of the bloodiest films ever made. It's also one of the most visceral: The squelching, watery sounds of the characters' injuries are truly stomach-churning. Viewers can practically smell Sarah's blood-soaked nightgown, which becomes a deeper and deeper shade of maroon red as the movie goes on. It's impossible not to squirm while watching pregnant Sarah, hoisting her nine-month belly from room to room and fighting against the demented intruder. 

Perhaps it's the blood itself that also draws viewers into this film. Women spend whole days of their lives bleeding. Their routines are disrupted as they must contend with the flow of blood that starts every month. Women know what blood means. They know they'll bleed for days (and sometimes weeks) at a time, and they know childbirth will be a painful, bloody ordeal, despite it often being portrayed optimistically on film.

But women's bodies can still be a mystery, even to the woman herself, especially when it comes to the reproductive system and pregnancy. Throughout Inside, there are many shots of babies in utero, either relaxing happily in amniotic fluid or (much more frequently) panicking as their hosts come under attack. It's a shock to see a fetus frantically jerking from side to side as blood fills their temporary home. It also reminds the viewer that women are unable to easily see what's going on inside their own bodies, leading to a body horror all its own, and the mystery of women's bodies is doubled when there is a completely vulnerable fetus involved. 

In the end, both Sarah and The Woman have the same goal: They want Sarah's baby to be born healthy. Sarah finally gives in as she goes into labor, and The Woman cuts into her belly to save the child. More than she wants to fight for her own life, she wants to fight for her baby's life. Inside ends with Sarah lying motionless on her stairs, her entire abdominal cavity splayed open. She's glistening from the vast amount of blood that's covering her body (not to mention her house). Even her eyes -- half-open and still -- are filled with blood, which also pours down the staircase in thick, dark waves. 

The Woman, on the other hand, is very much alive. She's also bloodied and injured -- most notable, her face is melting off after Sarah used The Woman's own cigarette to light her head on fire with an aerosol can. The Woman sits in a rocking chair, surrounded by a pool of blood, but she still coos and tenderly cradles Sarah's crying baby. She finally seems at peace.

The twist? It's hard not to have compassion for The Woman, despite her horrific behavior over the course of the film. At the start of the film, Sarah seems disconnected from her pregnancy. While it's most likely tied to her own trauma from the car accident, it's jarring to see someone so uninterested in their own baby. Although the child will be born on Christmas, she still does not have a name picked out. The Woman, who has been following Sarah for quite some time, tells her, "You don't want that child. I'll take good care of him." Given what The Woman has gone through, it would be impossible to doubt her promise. 

There are pregnancy films, there are horror films, there are even many pregnancy horror films, but Inside combines the mysteries of pregnancy and the female body, an unorthodox and complex villain, and the visceral shocks of The New French Extremity movement to create an unforgettable blood-spattered Christmas movie. 

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