Inside

High above the city in a Manhattan penthouse, art thief Nemo (Dafoe) is tasked with stealing the priceless artwork displayed within. With two out of the three works by Egon Schiele he set out to take in the bag, Nemo cuts his losses and prepares to make his exit with the help of his offscreen accomplices. However, there’s a problem – a computer malfunction that’s sealed the door and trapped Nemo inside. What started as a straightforward art heist quickly turns into a contained, tense survival thriller about the thief’s attempts at escape and dissolution into madness. Inside, the debut feature from Greek filmmaker Vasilis Katsoupis, looks great on paper but falls short in execution. Flitting between arthouse parody and self-important nonsense, Inside could easily slide into the latter entirely if it wasn’t for Dafoe’s committed and reliably compelling performance.

We follow Nemo as he wanders around the penthouse, which is without tap water and temperature regulation thanks to the thief breaking the smart hub that runs everything. In between getting drunk and rummaging through the penthouse’s rooms and cupboards, Nemo seeks escape through a central window on the roof. We also get a closer look at the art adorning the walls, made up of real works and two pieces commissioned for the movie that pop out amongst the austere visual sensibility of Inside. Eventually, the thief starts to break over time, talking to himself and getting attached to the pigeon trapped on the balcony and the people he sees on the security camera footage, clueless to his existence.

It’s a concept that works when Dafoe is at his most committed. Nemo has to rearrange furniture and art, deconstructing the gilded cage he’s trapped in to survive, and that results in an incredibly physical performance from Dafoe. He pushes tables down staircases, monologues, sings a bit of “The Macarena” (unfortunately no dancing), and even slurps down ice cubes and water trickling from a sprinkler with the rigorous commitment we’ve come to expect from Dafoe. Yet, his compelling performance is not enough to save the movie from a lack of vision beyond face value. What we get ultimately is a muddled message about art as necessity and then utility, all while the movie tries to cleverly create its own take on performance art through Dafoe.

Inside’s narrative being so muddled is a disservice to a promising concept. There are shades of what could’ve made an interesting, or at least distinct, movie here: Nemo walking around a party in a hallucinatory dream (or flashback? it’s never clear), the discovery of a cryptic, maybe even occult book, and empty nods toward the sexual frustration and isolation Nemo experiences while trapped. Instead of being brave enough to follow through, the movie is more interested in gesturing toward its incoherent message, which is a shame. Inside has all the surface trappings of an arthouse hit, but don’t look too closely – there isn’t much there.