Headtrips rarely get more literal than It’s What’s Inside , a body-swap thriller-com that was a Sundance sensation, to the tune of landing a $17 million payday via Netflix’s deep pockets. The deal makes sense – the streamer has a reputation for getting a lot of eyeballs on the work of auteurs and/or new directors, boosting viewership and careers at the same time (the likes of Todd Haynes and Jeremy Saulnier surely never enjoyed such big audiences when they weren’t making Netflix exclusives). But whether It’s What’s Inside ’s amusingly convoluted narrative makes complete sense is the question we’re going to address today.
IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? The Gist: Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) and Cyrus (James Morosini) seem to be piloting a dead shark here. They’ve been together since college, nine years. There’s no ring and no sex life and they may be wondering if there’s no hope.
She’s trying to create a spark in the bedroom and he’s – well, he’s firing up porn and shoving his hand down his pants. They at least have one mutual interest: Old college friend Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), whose hashtag-perfect-life Instagram feed Shelby watches with envy, and who Cyrus crushed on way back when (and may still), not that they share these thoughts with each other. It’s surely not a coincidence that Shelby dons a Nikki-esque wig and affects a Nikki-esque voice in an attempt to seduce Cyrus, is it? What goes unspoken here is so very loud.
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