Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
An art thief trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist doesn't go as planned. Locked inside with nothing but priceless works of art, he must use all his cunning and invention to survive.
Inside (2023) is a visually ambitious single-location survival thriller anchored by Willem Dafoe's committed physical performance. The cinematography is genuinely exceptional — the penthouse becomes a claustrophobic canvas, and director Vasilis Katsoupis uses the art-filled space with real ingenuity, creating striking tableaux that blur the line between the protagonist and the surrounding works. Dafoe's acting is above average given the near-wordless demands, though the role leans heavily on endurance over nuance. The plot, however, is thin to the point of frustration — the survival mechanics repeat without meaningful escalation, and the psychological dimension promised by the premise remains underdeveloped. The film's concept is distinctive enough to avoid being derivative, but it doesn't fully commit to either arthouse abstraction or genre thriller, leaving it in an uncertain middle ground. The ending is particularly unsatisfying, opting for an ambiguous non-resolution that feels less like earned open-endedness and more like an absence of a real conclusion.