'It's What's Inside' review: Netflix’s latest thriller can't be missed

Out of its lauded Sundance world premiere, It's What's Inside was picked up by Netflix, though that's a bit of a shame. While it's sure to find a streaming audience, the ideal way to watch the movie is surrounded by dozens of other unsuspecting strangers having a riotous evening as they discover the movie's audacious twists and turns. Failing that, you should watch it at home with your spouse or significant other, if only to test the strength of your relationship.

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Set at an intimate, all-gender bachelor party, It's What's Inside is a jaw-dropping thriller that follows the reunion of a diverse group of college friends with wildly entangled histories. However, to reveal its basic premise beyond this would feel like giving too much away, given its daring surprises (and more importantly, the way they're presented). Each is marked by uncanny remixes of familiar classical tunes and old movie scores. In the interest of preserving that experience — and at the request of Netflix's PR team — this review will hold back on those details until a section near the end, which will be clearly demarcated, though it won't spoil anything per se.

Why all the fuss? Well, even mentioning the freaky subgenre into which this movie falls might be a spoiler for some. But suffice to say, it's a deviously good time. Debuting writer/director Greg Jardin knows how to twist his screws with precision, and in the process, he crafts a ludicrous, metaphysical midnight romp that forces its ensemble to look at each other — and at themselves — in surprising ways.

It's What's Inside begins with jealousy.

Credit: Netflix

It takes about half an hour before the premise fully reveals itself to the audience, as well as to the characters, so the movie lays plenty of groundwork in the meantime. It begins with a young couple — the clammy, uptight Cyrus (James Morosini) and the well-meaning, nervous Shelby (Brittany O'Grady) — trying and failing miserably to spice up their love life. The duo's overlapping, nonsensical arguments reveal more about their broken relationship than straightforward exposition could hope to. Within seconds, Jardin announces himself as a deft dramatic storyteller who takes traditional conversations and stages them in new and exciting ways.

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The speed with which the film draws doubts and disagreements from its leading characters feels like a shot of adrenaline, starting with the couple's tiff over the blonde wig Shelby wears at Cyrus's request. This introduces a charged racial subtext in the process — Cyrus is white, while Shelby is a mixed-race Black woman — which the film flirts with in awkward and hilarious ways.

These lingering topics of race, body image and jealousy are further exacerbated when Cyrus and Shelby attend the aforementioned bachelor party. As soon as they show up, they're accosted by their group of college friends about why they aren't married eight years into their courtship. This inquisition is led by Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a famous blonde influencer on whose pictures Cyrus frequently leaves saucy public comments.

Something strange and unfulfilled is clearly in the ether, though no one seems to talk about it, making for an alluring introduction to a friend group with more than a few secrets. Seemingly ordinary conversations feel uncomfortable, as scenes of old friends catching up after years apart are imbued with unspoken tensions. As each new bit of information is revealed, all you can do is laugh in sheer delight at how absurdly good the movie is at creating tension in unique ways.

It's What's Inside hinges on a "missing link."

Credit: Netflix

Reunion stories work best when they feature a sense of absence. Lawrence Kasdan's film The Big Chill and Rahul da Cunha's play Class of '84 center on classmates coming together when an old friend dies, while Robert Altman's Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean follows old pals meeting to reminisce about the late actor James Dean. It's What's Inside isn't quite as somber, but it similarly establishes a complicated history with which the characters must reckon.

Once Cyrus and Shelby arrive, they're welcomed by Nikki and her charming former flame Reuben (Devon Terrell) — who happens to be the groom —  along with Reuben's secret stoner crush Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), his boisterous, trust-fund bestie Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), and their artist friend Brooke (Reina Hardesty). Together, they speculate on whether or not the eighth and final member of their group, Forbes (David Thompson), will show up. They haven't seen him in years, and as they recall the murky details of his expulsion from college after a drunken incident, their hazy memories take the form of a magnificently funny Rashomon-esque sequence adapted for the age of Instagram. Picture after picture of a fateful party from eight years ago appears across the screen. These still images, with various nostalgia-inducing Instagram filters, change in detail ever so slightly with each recollection, as though the characters' collective memory were an iPhone camera roll.

Jardin's propulsive montages of social media feeds, and his rapid, back-and-forth editing between his characters, creates a nerve-wracking rhythm. However, his new media-inspired aesthetic takes hilariously literal form when Forbes is actually introduced, mysterious green briefcase in hand. His friends remember him as a tech-savvy type, and Thompson may very well have been cast because of his resemblance to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose uncanny public persona he embodies with aplomb.

Facebook, on the surface, is about preserving moments in amber, and Jardin's ingeniously funny visual approach to capturing memories and relationships injects each scene with momentum, even if it seems like nothing important is unfolding. The fact is, something usually is happening, but the pieces only fit together in retrospect, like during scenes in which the camera (courtesy of cinematographer Kevin Fletcher) zooms into negative space, only for it to be filled in unexpected ways.

Rarely has a debuting director crafted a film that feels so precise in its visual chaos, bringing to the fore a lingering anxiety from beneath the seemingly mundane. The eye-popping production design certainly helps; Reuben hosts his party at the ornate  mansion he inherited from his mother. He turns it into a getaway destination rife with harsh, monochromatic lighting — a different color in every room! — and various mirrored art pieces, as though his idea of a good time were a giallo. The tone of the movie is playful enough (and more importantly, absorbing enough) for these inorganically-placed backdrops to justify themselves.

As the party goes on, its conversations take the form of chaotic cacophonies. Few individual sentences stand out amidst the overlapping chatter, but each actor quickly establishes their character's general vibe and behavior, as the camera circles around them in disorienting fashion. All it takes is a line or two — sometimes even just a silent gesture — to get a read on each character, like Maya's laid-back demeanor, or Dennis's tendency to provoke conflict in the guise of jokes.

These introductory scenes have a vibrant, youthful energy, but they're purposeful too. They're fleeting snapshots of who these people are, which comes in handy later on, when the movie's focus shifts towards figuring out who they're pretending to be. These hidden truths are unveiled (and eventually gamified) when Forbes reveals what's in his briefcase, and while its contents are best left discovered during the movie, the nature of the story is at least worth touching upon, for a couple of reasons. One, if you're still on the fence, maybe a bit of clarity about the premise might convince you. And two, while that premise may sound like it's been done to death, rest assured — no other movie has quite approached this central conceit like It's What's Inside.

Okay… What is It's What's Inside really about?

Credit: Netflix

You won't find major spoilers here, but if you'd like to avoid a basic sense of the movie's subgenre, here's your off-ramp. This review will only reveal as much as its writer knew going in, which all but ensures it'll still be a tremendously good time.

Minor plot details to follow.

It's What's Inside is a body-swap movie, though how exactly it becomes one (and the ensuing plot mechanics from there on out) are worth discovering for yourself. Forbes, whose creepy grins and shifty demeanor hint at some kind of bone to pick, lures his friends into a party game, which he explains is best understood when experienced firsthand. Like the film, trying to explain it in words might not do its surprises justice.

You've probably seen a body-swap movie or two — perhaps Freaky Friday, The Hot Chick, or the Jumanji sequels — though few of them have unfolded on quite this scale, or have been gamified in such an exciting way. In the aforementioned examples, it's relatively easy to keep things straight; it's two people switching places and two actors behaving like one another, which is often a selling point. Face/Off isn't quite a body-swap movie in the same way, but who doesn't love seeing John Travolta channeling Nicolas Cage? Or, in the Harry Potter movies, Helena Bonham Carter playing Hermione Granger pretending to be Bellatrix Lestrange?

Now, think of how many nesting-doll permutations of these you could have with more than two characters, and the actors' broad, idiosyncratic performances in It's What's Inside click into place. However, the audience is never left confused unless Jardin wants them to be. Through innovative use of color, split-screen shots, and layered performances, everything tracks at all times, no matter how seemingly complicated the premise becomes.

By giving his characters wild new experiences and modes of interaction, Jardin forces their interpersonal tensions to the surface in ways that are constantly surprising. You can never quite tell exactly which zig will lead to what kind of a zag, even if it seems obvious as a traditional screenwriting setup. But It's What's Inside is far from traditional, and payoffs click into place in uproarious fashion, even when it feels like the movie might run out of steam late into its strangely existential second act.

Each jaw-dropping turn slowly and skillfully builds its story of strained romance, the inability to communicate, and the fears and insecurities that set in years into a relationship, and it does all this in a briskly fun 102 minutes. With a roving camera that never slows down, It's What's Inside feels alive in a way few recent Hollywood thrillers have, with each formal decision revealing secrets and subtext through eye-popping composition. Wielding devilishly enjoyable visual language, it provides winking hints of catharsis that make even its most audacious, galaxy-brained genre swerves feel like a couple's therapy session atop the world's tallest, fastest rollercoaster. It's a frenetic and fascinating film that can't be missed.

It's What's Inside is now streaming on Netflix.

UPDATE: Oct. 2, 2024, 3:28 p.m. EDT It's What's Inside was reviewed out of its Texas premiere at SXSW 2024. This review was first published on March 21, 2024, and has been updated to reflect viewing options.