‘Inside’ Review: Willem Dafoe Is a Tour de Force in Audacious Psychological Drama
thewrap.comYou didn’t think Willem Dafoe would star in a conventional escape room thriller, did you? Then again, “Inside” is barely an escape room thriller despite it being about an art thief trapped in the location of his latest heist.
Greek filmmaker Vasilis Katsoupis’s elegant provocation may be closer to the kind of existential mood pieces that generations ago defined so much of European cinema, but it’s been given a modern gloss of design, tension, and star power more in keeping with the gripping tales of solitude that have found a mainstream audience (“Cast Away,” “Life of Pi,” “All Is Lost”).Inevitably, because of its challenging nature, “Inside” and its methodical excavation of one man’s survival instincts in a place not assumed to require endurance –- a luxury penthouse in Manhattan — will likely only appeal to the arthouse crowd.
Even among discerning moviegoers its more indulgent elements may occasionally grate.But in Dafoe, an actor of feral unpredictability and hypnotic intelligence, Katsoupis and screenwriter Ben Hopkins have the ideal partner to walk the fine line between what’s relatable and what’s impossible to fathom.
To call Dafoe’s solo turn a summing up of his career in film across decades — how easily he moves between Hollywood and the offbeat, bringing a little of one to the other and vice versa — seems not only appropriate, but intrinsic to the physical and spiritual magnetism he brings here.We hear Nemo (Dafoe) first while Katsoupis unveils a series of images depicting the space where we’ll be for 100 minutes or so: a sleekly furnished, open-plan high-rise pad full of chicly displayed modern art, which in the light of dusk reveals striking shadows.
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