I love (or not) "Inside".
I think it's stunningly nasty, bleak and uncompromising and is just kick in the head intense.
I'd rate it easily above (****ed itself up its own arse ending) "Haute", much better than "Frontiers" (though I did like that) and even above "Martyrs" (as I for one don't rate the final part of it that compared to the superb rest of it).
"Paintball" http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvpaint.php
A group of multi-national thrill seekers are blindfolded and dumped in the woods to take part in an extreme paintball campaign against another, unseen, team.
Suddenly one of the team is shot not by a paint pellet, but by a bullet.
Fleeing from the now lethal fire the team, with no idea where they are, must fight for their lives before it’s game over for all of them….
First things first.
“Paintball” (a Spanish production, though filmed in English) blasts off right into the action as soon as it starts.
Initially we're thrown right into the chaotic, frenzied paintball game (which is actually rather fun to watch and here played with some amazingly fancy looking guns) which 10 minutes later slams us into the ‘real threat’ part of the movie and it literally never lets up again until the end credits.
Thankfully the screenplay manages to deliver a distinctive bunch of characters who are all well acted by the cast who all manage to sketch their roles out despite the endless fleeing, fighting and dying.
This is also a well crafted bunch of people.
Most of the team are very driven, they have never met each other before and suddenly they find themselves being hunted by an unseen enemy of unknown origin and number.
As such their is almost no team aesthetic here. They argue, they back-bite, they betray and they do all they can to personally survive.
It's a bleak sketch of humanity, but to me it rings totally true for such a situation.
The killer's POV is the major idea highlight in the film.
The killer wears thermal imaging goggles which give the scenes a bright white/grey look, which in of itself is not unique or that stunning. But the way it’s used here is very clever and visually important to the movies entire aesthetic make-up.
The film is pretty violent in general, but the real nasty, messy, kills are shot POV through the thermal goggles, as such we can still make out the nastiness happening but it now has a unique feel.
The way such scenes now look, the way the bright white blood outrageously shoots and spurts out of people for example, is really memorable.
But the best use of the killer's thermal imagery is when it’s used to reveal things we (or the other characters) can't see.
There are two superb ‘thermal reveal’ scenes, but the best is the first and it's a really effective surprise and such a great visual trick.
The movies only real problems come in the plotting of the main set-up.
The first ‘thermal reveal’ scene also reveals more of what is happening plot wise, and although it’s a different slant on the idea, we have been here before.
The, rather low key, finale is also a bit of a mess even if it still works.
This is where the plot unravels as we now have a couple of holes left unfilled (though you can sort of fill them yourself if you think outside the screenplay).
This confusion is made annoying by the fact there was no need for it, as without the final moments all was fine and the film had reached a perfectly fine conclusion.
So be prepared to feel a bit at a loss and a bit unsatisfied as the credits roll, but thankfully it's not a movie destroying problem by any means and the rest is so fun, tense, well staged, visually clever, and just violent and bloody enough, to ensure a real good time is had.