#thanks for the ask buddy! always excited to ramble on about bodyswapping media to you and I'm so glad you liked this one too

[augustjustice]

It's What's Inside!!!! is good!!!

It really is!!! I got the chance to watch it Friday, I've just had a crazy hectic weekend so couldn't respond until now. But I really, really liked it, and I'm so happy you did too! So relieved to have a good bodyswap flick that isn't afraid to do some cool things with the premise.

Some spoilery thoughts below the cut:

You mentioned this in your liveblogging of it, but I really liked the editing style here and how it drew attention to itself! The freneticness of it did a great job capturing both the imitation of social media they were at times going for and also some of the chaos of the premise as it went off the rails in the latter half. And I thought they did a great job depicting what anxiety can be like with some of the filmic techniques they used, which I know the director has spoken about wanting to tap into with this movie.

Some of those tricks especially worked well with the bodyswapping concept! I liked the moments when the camera peeled back the layers to reveal "who was inside." At the time when they didn't show Forbes, I thought they were just playing 4D chess with us, keeping who was who somewhat concealed. That worked really well looking back with the eventual Beatrice reveal at the end.

The way the film layered in roleplaying/desire to be someone else was deftly handled, I felt. I think it was smart to kind of anchor the movie in Shelby and Cyrus's relationship troubles with his continued fixation on Nikki being at the center of it. The entire friend group's dynamic being so messy with many of them clearly still romantically and sexually hung up on each other really heightened everything, and it also opened up some interesting questions about physical vs. romantic desire. Like, the fact that Cyrus was obsessed with Nikki regardless of "what was inside" (🥁) is...telling. I also thought it was fantastic to have a film acknowledge race as a complicated component of identity when it comes to bodyswapping! Gender is often played with in this trope, but that was the first time I had seen media try to tackle that element of things.

One thing I liked the most about the movie is that the events had real consequences. I've never seen a piece of media actually engage with the question of what would happen if someone else died while inside your body, so it was exciting to see that tackled and to have an ending without a neat resolution. It leaves you as a viewer to ponder their fates and what happens after this, which I really appreciated.

Also, brief shout out to the acting! Of course that's always pivotal in these movies, but the cast did a stellar job of telegraphing who was who even when those characters were trying to conceal their identities from each other.

Overall, fantastic movie! Definitely going into my rewatch list of bodyswapping films.