Is ‘It’s What’s Inside’ as Clever as It Thinks It Is?

A wise man once said it’s a fine line between stupid and clever, and should anyone doubt the inherent truth in that comment, we’d like to present them with Exhibit A: It’s What’s Inside, a Netflix acquisition out of this year’s Sundance that’s far more of the former and way, way less of the latter than it thinks it is. This tale of self-involved millennials, a mystery machine and a whole mess of purposefully mistaken identities is the kind of mash-up of high-concept horror and ham-fisted satire that mistakes complicated for complex, and a pile-up of confusing plot twists for storytelling. You can see why someone might want to market this as a cool, stylish tweak on the old be-careful-what-you-wish-for chestnut — a variation on a Monkey’s Paw narrative with faux-A24 flavor. Don’t be fooled by the whirling cameras and bright colors. This is just a lot of sound and fury signifying what’s really inside this overly busy attempt at blowing your mind: nothing.

It’s the night before Reuben (Devon Terrell) is set to wed his longtime girlfriend at the massive estate he’s inherited, and he’s arranged to have all of his college friends join him for one last blow-out. In attendance are: Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a blonde influencer with millions of followers; Shelby (Brittany O’Grady), who’s jealous of Nikki’s online omnipresence; Cyrus (James Morosini), a.k.a. Shelby’s boyfriend, who watches a lot of porn and secretly pines for Nikki; Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), a hippy-dippy seeker who, like, just got into Buddhism, and who Reuben still carries a torch for; Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), a bro who still uses party primarily as a verb; and Brooke (Reina Hardesty), who… has partially dyed-red hair. Writer-director Greg Jardin may have run out of broadly defining characteristics for these early-thirtysomethings by the time he got to her, so it’s tough to get a bead on Brooke. In fact, all of the above capsule descriptions offer about as much development as you’re likely to get for these thinly sketched archetypes, which makes the film’s big raison dêtre that much tougher to follow. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

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There’s one last guest who’s been invited to this prenuptial reunion, someone who the gang is hoping won’t actually show up. His name is Forbes (David Thompson), and you know how most groups have that friend who always tries a little too hard, takes it too far, makes things go from totally chill to super-uncomfortable? That’s Forbes. Back in the day, he had a penchant for getting wasted and having serious anger issues. Some bad business involving a party, his high-school age sister, and her crush on Dennis ended up getting Forbes kicked out of school. He eventually made his way to Silicon Valley, a place that never met a mercurial genius with social awkwardness it didn’t love and shower with riches, and became a big deal in the tech industry. Reuben felt that he had to at least extend an invitation. Surprisingly, Forbes makes an appearance. And he’s brought a little something with him.

It’s a box, with a number of different dials, blinking lights and outlets. A series of snaking electrodes connect this whatsit to participants’ noggins; there seem to be enough to go around for Forbes and all of his old pals. Rather than tell them what this doohickey does, he’s going to show them. A switch is flipped, and suddenly, everyone’s switched bodies. As in, Cyrus is now housing Forbes’ consciousness, Brooke is now inside Nikki’s head, etc. Then a second switch is flipped, and everything returns to normal. Everybody is like, whoa! That was insane!! Let’s do it again!!!

So Forbes introduces them to the game he and his team have been playing with their invention. The rules are simple: Each person gets transferred to someone else. Then they have to guess which person is in each new body. If someone correctly guesses who’s who, the identified contestant is out of the round and has to pin a Polaroid pic of their “true” self to their host body’s shirt. The whole group is down for it. What could go wrong?
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We’ve been kindly asked to keep spoilers to a minimum, and assuming you can follow the borderline nonsensical twists and turns that happen from here on in — we truly wish you the best of luck — here’s where It’s What’s Inside starts to venture into potential shhh territory. So we’ll note that maybe some people aren’t really who they say they are once the round starts. Maybe some folks take advantage of this situation to indulge in less-than-kosher behavior. Maybe sex and death come into the picture. Maybe alliances are formed that pit old friends against each other. Maybe a peripheral character will suddenly play a major part at the very last second, pushing your already strained suspension-of-disbelief to the snapping point. Maybe you’ll throw your hands up in frustration at how needlessly hard this is to follow.
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In Jardin’s defense, he does employ the nifty trick of using a red filtered-light — an optical illusion that one person utilizes early on in the film, which is then borrowed by the man behind the camera — to show you who’s genuinely, say, getting hot and heavy with each other in the shadows or plotting against their pals. Except all of these millennials are so ill-defined, and most of their motivations are so muddled, that it’s still tough to keep the who, what and why of it all straight. Never mind caring about any of these characters, a word that should technically be in scare quotes here, though kudos to the cast for being so nimble in switching personality traits, defining tics and signature cadences on a dime. They get almost as much of a workout as your brain does, as you try to keep up with whatever new bit of business the movie belches up to distract you from the fact that there’s little under the hood here.

Do we sound a little cynical here? This is the kind of look-ma-I-can-rotate-a-camera-360-degrees sizzle reel masquerading as a feature that inspires little else but cynicism. It’s What’s Inside is essentially the equivalent of the mystery box, in that you’re never sure how it does what it’s doing and, once it’s fully turned on, simply causes a lot of problems that quickly spiral out of control. The only difference is that the machine actually seems to work.