With Halloween fast approaching, it’s routine for the best streaming services to roll out the trailers for new spooky season titles, and I for one am always on the lookout for fresh horror movies to help me settle into the colder and darker months, so when I saw the trailer for the new Netflix movie It’s What’s Inside, I instantly thought it would be a perfect watch for next month.
Following its successful premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in January, Greg Jardin’s trippy thriller has received an October 4 release date on Netflix, which will follow its showcase at the forthcoming Netflix Geeked Week – the streamer’s version of Comic-Con.
However, in spite of the trailer’s unsettling snippets of a technology-induced mind trip that allows characters to swap bodies – which you can watch below – Jardin’s thriller defies the boundaries of horror by blending elements of different genres. He described the movie in an interview with Netflix as "a sci-fi thriller with jokes".
In addition to his remarks on the movie’s genre, Jardin described the movie as what we can expect to be a thriller with an underlying commentary about authenticity and online lifestyles. In a conversation with Oscar winner Colman Domingo, who executive produced the film alongside his husband Raúl Domingo, Jardin revealed that the movie is "essentially top-line sci-fi conceit of body-swapping allow us to explore the artificial intimacy presented online in the various forms – social media being a huge one".
The trailer, which shows a group of teenagers playing a game that allows them to swap bodies, has a resemblance to the 2022 horror Bodies Bodies Bodies, which revolves around a group of friends playing a murder-in-the-dark style party game – also resulting in a chaotic bloodbath. So, if the black comedic elements of It’s What’s Inside match the unhinged humor of Bodies Bodies Bodies, one of the best Netflix movies, it could be in the running for my most anticipated movie of the spooky season.
What to expect from the plot of It’s What’s Inside
When chatting to Domingo, Jardin condenses the plot into three key story plots: "A bunch of friends at a party, guy brings suitcase, shit gets crazy." Set during the events of a pre-wedding party, a group of friends gather at a large estate to begin the celebrations – each of them representing a different archetype including influencer Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), artist Brooke (Reina Hardesty), stereotypical kid with a trust-fund Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), and the groom Reuben (Devon Terrell).
But it’s the mysterious Forbes (David Thompson) who shakes up the events of the night, who arrives at the function with a mysterious suitcase. He opens it to unveil a polygraph test-like mechanism that allows people to switch bodies using electrodes, and when he convinces the guests to partake in the game, the night unravels into a mind-bending turn of events.
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