From Within (2008) Movie Review

“From Within” is the first film from Phedon Papamichael as a director for nearly 15 years, following his forgettable early 1990s thrillers “Dark Side of Genius” and “Sketch Artist”. The time since has certainly been well spent, with Papamichael honing his craft as one of the top cinematographers in the business, having worked on the likes of “Sideways”, “Walk the Line”, “W” and “3:10 to Yuma” as director of photography. Perhaps having learned his lessons, he has here returned behind the camera in a different way with a slice of Bible belt horror as suicides and ghostly visions torment a small Christian community in the American south. Interestingly enough, despite the setting, the film draws its influences quite obviously from the recent wave of modern Asian ghost chillers, perhaps unsurprisingly given that writer Brad Keene was also recently responsible for remake non-sequel “The Grudge 3”.

The film begins with a young goth teen eating his gun, after which his terrified girlfriend stabs herself in the neck with a pair of scissors, seemingly against her will. Rumours abound that the boy, whose mother was an apparent witch killed years back in a suspicious accident, was cursed, spreading fear amongst the faithful in the community. Sure enough, more mysterious deaths follow, all supposedly suicides, and the finger of blame is pointed squarely at Aiden (Thomas Dekker, also in “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and recent slasher “Laid to Rest”), the other remaining son. Meanwhile, the feisty young Lindsay (Elizabeth Rice, “Mad Men”) finds herself falling for the outcast lad, much to the violent anger of her fiercely religious would-be beau and her alcoholic stepmother. Surprising no-one, the curse soon has her in its creepy clutches and she starts having visions of her own impending doom.

In terms of plot, “From Within” is a fairly basic affair, and it’s easy to see where it is going from early on. For the most part, writer Keene simply riffs on modern Asian horror clichés, throwing in an all-consuming grudge/curse/ring which switches between people, and which brings about the usual weird visions of doppelgangers, apparitions and such. In fact, he even goes so far as to liberally lift whole scenes from other films, with a number of sequences looking suspiciously familiar, especially to anyone who has seen either the original Korean “Into the Mirror” or Alexandre Aja’s remake “Mirrors”. Of course, many other recent western horrors have been equally guilty of this, and to be fair the film does at least make an effort to weave these motifs into a different setting and to play them off against different concepts of good and evil.

The film certainly benefits from its setting and religious angle, providing an interesting examination of Bible belt life, with fundamentalism, intolerance and hypocrisy inevitably being the main themes. Given this, the film’s supernatural elements are almost unnecessary, though they do work well enough, and the plot builds to an amusingly bleak twist ending. Although the film wisely doesn’t go too overboard with shots at such an easy target, some of the hard-line Christian characters arguably come across as being even more frightening than the curse itself, evoking the spirit of “Children of the Corn” and leading nostalgic viewers to half expect a cameo appearance from our old friend, He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

Sadly, the old rug beneath the soil demon fails to appear, and what viewers get instead are a fair few creative death scenes, which are just about enough to keep genre fans entertained, derivative though they are. The film also packs in the expected plethora of jump scares, again most of which have been seen many times before, but which do help to keep the film moving along at a reasonable pace and which thankfully are not accompanied by sudden bursts of loud music or the now standard quick-cut “Saw” style editing. Although not particularly frightening or bloody, the film is atmospheric in a pleasingly subtle fashion, with Papamichael showing a good eye behind the camera, aided in no small part by some handsome production values. The film is visually polished without being over-stylised, and enjoys a far more professional feel than the vast majority of its direct to DVD brethren.

As a result, despite being overly familiar and unambitious “From Within” is a solid piece of genre work which manages to entertain throughout. Clocking in at less than an hour and a half, it doesn’t outstay its welcome, and does at least provide a different backdrop for the usual array of tried and tested scares and skeleton heavy closets.

Phedon Papamichael (director) / Brad Keene (screenplay)
CAST: Elizabeth Rice … Lindsay
Thomas Dekker … Aidan
Kelly Blatz … Dylan
Laura Allen … Trish
Adam Goldberg … Roy
Margo Harshman … Sadie
Rumer Willis … Natalie
Brittany Robertson … Claire