Shubhabrata Dutta
Directed by Greg Jardin, ‘It’s What’s Inside’ has received widespread appreciation for its cleverly built and stylistic plot plus compelling performances and trippy visuals. It centers on a group of friends who come together for a pre-wedding bash. One of the people brings along a mysterious briefcase that contains a piece of tech he proposes they use to play a game. What follows is a bizarre series of events wherein all the people come face to face with their desires, vendettas, and jealousy. After all, they have been body-swapped! It is a mind-bending and genre-bending film that can be perceived as sci-fi, horror, horror-comedy, and/or thriller. If you loved the confusing nature of the film and how it treats the confusing identity motif, we bet you’ll love these movies similar to ‘It’s What’s Inside.’
10. Triangle (2009)
A group of friends coming together only to become targets by a stranger (possibly one among them) is a plot point connecting ‘Triangle’ to ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ The Christopher Smith directorial is set on an abandoned cruise liner wherein a group of people have to take on a mysterious shooter as well as themselves to avoid dying.
In ‘Triangle,’ the briefcase is replaced with a ship. One can also say that, like the teenagers who find themselves stuck in the world created by the briefcase, here, the people are stuck in the world within the ship. In both films, the search for what’s true and what’s false gives rise to unexpected encounters, although in ‘Triangle,’ Smith raises the horror bar. Dark and psychological in its approach, the film takes the fun out of ‘It’s What’s Inside’ and replaces it with survival horror.
9. Mother! (2017)
Seeing is believing. Or is it? In Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Mother!,’ inspired by the Bible, centers on a couple, Him (Javier Bardem) and Mother (Jennifer Lawrence), whose tranquil life is upended by the arrival of another older couple. This is followed by a string of bizarre events that start taking a toll on Mother, who begins to question her very husband and the house they live in.
While ‘It’s What’s Inside’ uses science to bring about a confused state for the characters and the audience, ‘Mother!’ uses religion to do the same. Aronofsky’s incorporation of biblical elements makes it feel like they can easily be out of the briefcase in ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ Or, it can be said that the briefcase itself has become the Bible in ‘Mother!’ Just as Mother tries to make sense of what’s happening around her, so do the teenagers in Jardin’s drama. In both cases, fear results from unfamiliarity.
8. Mandy (2018)
Starring Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, and Linus Roache, ‘Mandy’ offers a unique twisted take on horror by blending it with action and animation. The film follows war veteran lumberjack Red Miller, whose peaceful life is ravaged to bits by Jeremiah Sand, a cult leader. Vowing vengeance, Miller sets off on a gory spree to kill all those responsible, including a demonic biker gang. There is a hallucinogenic motif that the film incorporates. This motif shown serves as a narrative element. In ‘It’s What’s Inside,’ the same motif is used as a fuel to propel the effect of the briefcase on the teenagers. While the use is subtle, it is evident and connects the two films. Lastly, if you are into blood and gore, ‘Mandy’ offers a thrilling watch with Cage’s performance as a bonus.
7. Talk to Me (2022)
Danny and Michael Philippou’s supernatural horror film ‘Talk to Me’ replaces the suitcase with a severed, embalmed hand. When 17-year-old Mia, surrounded by her friends, uses the hand to access the other plane and speak to a deceased loved one, she is successful. Only, she forgets to “close the door.” Soon, they all start experiencing inexplicable phenomena, all of which seem connected to the hand. Spooky and terrifyingly mind-bending, the film is A24’s highest-grossing horror film.
Jardin’s drama pulls the sci-fi stunt to establish its horror theme. In ‘Talk to Me,’ Philippou uses the supernatural stunt. However, it is the use of a gathering to up the effect of horror that brings the two films under the same roof. How the same event affects different people differently, and terrifyingly so, serves as the undertone in both of them.
6. Identity (2003)
‘Identity’ features a stellar cast, including John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, and Alfred Molina. Inspired by Agatha Christie‘s mystery novel ‘And Then There Were None,’ the film brings together ten strangers in a remote hotel during a rainstorm. As people start dying one by one, it is suspected that the killer is inside the hotel. Meanwhile, a serial killer responsible for killing a handful of motel guests awaits execution.
Inherently, the characters in ‘Identity’ and ‘It’s What’s Inside’ share the element of secrecy. In the latter film, the “friends” find out that there are secrets among them, and those are what drive the film after point as we wait to find out what’s true and what’s false. The same is the case with ‘Identity,’ which is also driven by secrets. Moreover, ‘Identity’ revels in making viewers judge the characters’ intentions. The same is true with ‘It’s What’s Inside,’ which makes us wonder who is speaking the truth. In both films, the viewers act as potential characters without realizing it.
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5. Primer (2004)
If you have found ‘It’s What’s Inside’ mind-bending, ‘Primer’ will make things much worse. A sci-fi that tests your brain’s ability to grasp time travel, the Shane Carruth directorial follows two engineers, Aaron and Abe, who accidentally discover time travel while working on a tech project. Bent on finding out how effective it is, Abe becomes a test subject and goes back in time, setting off a chain of events that eventually leads him to face himself many times.
Carruth’s use of the theme of reality manipulation is the underlying current that is also used in ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ However, in ‘Primer,’ the manipulation is real because it is time travel, while in the titular drama, it is all in the mind. Yet, the question that connects the two is: Isn’t reality what the mind makes of it?
4. Cube (1997)
Vincenzo Natali’s Kafkaesque drama ‘Cube’ follows a group of strangers stuck in a cube-shaped room, one among many fitted with deadly traps. Whether they manage to stay alive and escape depends on how well they assess the rooms. Confusion reigns supreme in ‘Cube’ and ‘It’s What’s Inside,’ and is followed by the resulting feeling of being lost in a maze. In Natali’s drama, the maze is a real one, while in the titular film, the maze is of the mind. The paranoia, suspicion, and desperation the characters fall prey to while searching for a way to escape also connect it to ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ However, ‘Cube’ carries higher stakes as death is imminent.
3. Braid (2018)
Disorienting, twisted, and stunningly stylized, ‘Braid’ follows two wanted women, Petula and Tilda, who decide to rob their mentally unstable childhood friend, Daphne, who lives in a huge secluded mansion. They need to find a safe somewhere in the mansion, which will take time. Meanwhile, they have to play a make-believe game of fantasy with Daphne, in which no one can leave. As Petula and Tilda begin their search, the game turns more and more bizarre to the point of being hallucinatory, and the line between what’s real and what’s delusion fades.
The mansion in ‘Braids’ can be addressed as the manifestation of the state the teens in the titular drama find themselves in, which is portrayed as a stylized hallucinatory world. The sisters in ‘Braids’ deliberately take a step that turns their worlds upside down, and they wonder how to escape it. The same situation is faced by the characters in ‘It’s What’s Inside,’ thereby establishing an underlying link.
2. Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
Starring Rachel Sennott, Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson, and Lee Pace, Halina Reijn’s ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ shares with ‘It’s What’s Inside’ the psychedelic nature of a young adult get-together that precedes a sequence of bizarre events. In the black comedy, a group of friends are having a hurricane party over-brimmed with booze, drugs, and hook-ups. In ‘It’s What’s Inside,’ a mysterious suitcase results in chaos; in this film, it’s a corpse. In both films, the psychedelic vibe overtakes everything else, taking a toll on the characters who seem to enjoy it initially, only to be subjected to its dark side. Revelations take center stage, resulting in conflicted opinions that shape something dark. The tumultuous situations, incorporating the innermost shades of the characters, are also akin to those in Jardin’s drama.
1. Coherence (2013)
‘Coherence’ is inclined toward the sci-fi angle in ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ In the James Ward Byrkit directorial, a group of people at a dinner party are subjected to inexplicable events after a comet passes very close to Earth. Byrkit puts identity, existence, and reality into question, just like what James does in ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ Furthermore, in both films, science is what results in the drama and pretty much grounds the two narratives in reality. The comet has resulted in a surreal and singularly strange phenomenon in which no one knows what’s real and what’s not. This is also what the briefcase does in ‘It’s What’s Inside.’ In Jardin’s drama, the briefcase is the microcosm, while in Byrkit’s film, the comet is the macrocosm, and both elements result in the same illusion of confusion and chaos.
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