It’s What’s Inside
How much do you trust your friends?
A group of friends defies bachelor party conventions and the rules of physics in this sci-fi thriller.
A group of college friends reunites for a wedding. Reuben (Devon Terrell) is planning on marrying Sophia (Aly Nordlie) and wants to get the gang back together for one last wild weekend. As with most long-standing friend groups, there’s plenty of drama that’s either been overlooked or worked through by the group, including crushes, relationships, and fights.
What should be a lighthearted weekend of casual drinking and reminiscing is flipped on its head when the final member of the friend group, Forbes (David Thompson), arrives carrying a briefcase. Inside, he claims, is the technology needed to switch consciousness between anyone in the party.
Why get drunk when you can swap bodies?
Because no one in this friend group has ever seen or read a sci-fi novel, they all agree to this horrible party game. At first, it’s pretty fun. The minds are swapped, and the partygoers take turns trying to guess the identity of the people inhabiting new bodies. But then…the groups start to fracture.
Some people lie about which body they’re in, others take the opportunity to work out long-standing attractions. All of this is stuff that can probably be worked out in therapy, but when two of the group end up dead, a bigger problem occurs.
Now, the friend group must decide who gets to swap back and even if they can. Was Forbes’ motivation merely a goofy game, or was there something sinister behind his briefcase?
If kids these days read more 60s sci-fi, so much tragedy could be avoided…
It’s What’s Inside is the Gen Z version of a Ray Bradbury story, the way that Bodies Bodies Bodies is a Gen Z Agatha Christie mystery. Both are clever updates to genres that are often overlooked by modern audiences. Writer/director Greg Jardin does an admirable job of keeping this convoluted concept interesting and the body swapping clear. Each scene has little tells that help attentive viewers guess who is inhabiting whom.
The movie also has plenty of style, helped along by the fact that the house the group stays in seems to be designed for maximum Instagram impact. Each room has a separate theme and lighting, which is ridiculous, but also stylish and cool. No one is actually living in a house with a hall of mirrors, but it’s a neat look on camera and thematically on point, so why quibble?
The performances are also fun. The actors get to play different roles depending on who is inside their minds, which gives them lots of layers to toy with as the movie goes forward. Yes, a lot of them are vapid influencer-style stereotypes, but Jardin manages to claw down to the meat of each character, getting to what drives them.
And while It’s What’s Inside has plenty of flair and an interesting concept, it’s the script that’s the real letdown. Jardin does a great job with the set-up and the characters, but the payoff is convoluted and a bit nonsensical. He sacrifices a lot of the audience’s goodwill just to get a few twists in that don’t improve the story or the metaphor. It’s as if the director wanted a big, dramatic reveal, but the story itself was dramatic enough without poorly-plotted nonsense piled on top of it.
While it’s certainly a fun romp, Jardin’s script doesn’t quite stick the landing. Still, I can’t wait to see what he dreams up for his next film.
Verdict: An interesting sci-fi concept gets some Gen Z riz.
It’s What’s Inside is rated R and available October 4 on Netflix.
