Saw À l'Intérieur (AKA Inside) It was one of that crop of modern, extreme horrors. True to genre, the film starts slow and kind of sad and slowly becomes more and more difficult to watch. The plot follows a young woman who is one night away from a scheduled cesarean birth. The baby's father was killed in a car crash four months earlier and it is now Christmas eve. Another woman, dressed like Morticia Addams, begins menacing our hero, trying desperately to extract the baby one day early. Just going on the premise, it's pretty harrowing.
The film is horrifying. I had to watch nearly the entire thing with the sound turned waaaay down. I missed out on a lot of the film that way, I'm sure, but at least I was able to watch it (at all.) I was struck by how specifically feminine the horror is. Obviously, there's the central pregnant woman (and it's Christmas eve. Remind you of any other famous mothers?) but also the murderess's weapons are all fairly femme. She preferentially wields a sturdy pair of scissors and at one point uses a knitting needle to great effect. She uses a gun once, which blows a bit of a hole into my theory, but I've never let contradictory evidence stop me before and I won't start now!
The antagonistic woman is ugly. She is gap-toothed and lank-haired, wearing a black dress, complete with corset and spool-heel shoes. She evokes the witch, the fates, the midwife. At one point, she pretends to be the protagonist's mother. All of these are powerful, feminine symbols. The protagonist is dressed in a white (but increasingly soiled) night-gown. She cowers for most of the film in a fluorescent-lit bathroom, which ironically evokes the controlled environment of a hospital. Almost all of the protagonist's would-be saviors are men who are each either completely useless or downright burdensome to her before they inevitably succumb to the antagonist's scissors. I believe the antagonist symbolizes the implacable, uncontrollable, force of nature that is birth. The protagonist does not want the baby removed from her, but it's going to come out. She wants the process to be controlled and safe but it is bloody, messy, and unbelievably painful. Throughout her struggle, she is alone with this monster and, worst of all, once the baby comes out, it stops being hers.
By the way: there's also gallons of blood, tons of stabbings, and an emergency tracheotomy that we're treated to, so this is no chilly think-fest. I found the lady-centric angle interesting, but make no mistake: the film is meant to be an ordeal and is. It's fun in moments in an extremely morbid way (if you're into that (which I am not.)) At one point, the antagonist brains someone with a well-slung toaster. It's so bizarre, you have to laugh a little. I was a bit disappointed at the weird, ugly CGI baby that shows up a few times. It floats around, presumably in the protagonist's womb, doing flips and bouncing off the 'walls' (which I don't think can actually happen. I've seen pictures and it seems like there's just not that much room.) Anyway, I think the baby would have worked much better in the abstract. It's much more potent as a symbol when it's not seen (and not clearly made of meshed polygons.)
So, this movie was tough. It was interesting, which I liked, but also very scary, which I didn't. It got the better of me and I think, based on the preceding details, that you can tell if it would be your cup of tea. Enough.
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