Review: Inside Out (2D)

Pixar elite director Pete Doctor returns with another colourful yet human experience with Inside Out.

Riley, a young eleven year old girl, experiences the hardships of moving house with her parents, her emotions are running riot inside her mind. Literally. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust are all present and failing to cope, especially when Joy is lost.

Inside Out is an incredible stand out experience in Pixar's library, there isn't anything quite like this which may prove it to be divisive among the general public. Pixar have always held "family friendly" as keystone of their productions, catering to both adults and children.
Despite what critics have said already, I think Inside Out is angled far more towards teenagers and adults.

The film is dealing with mental states, neuroses and the building blocks of youthful experiences that can shape who we grow up to become. That's some heavy and frankly endless material right there! Couple that with a (mostly) fully realised fantasy organisation within all of our characters' heads and the characters there too! Come to think about it... an hour and a half seems too short.
The trailer gave little away, so I didn't know what to expect, but I felt somewhat short-changed in the delivery of these concepts. The film barrels along, often at breakneck speeds to keep children entertained, while throwing great jokes and awesome visual metaphor left and right, but I wish there had been more attention given to some aspects.
Example: Riley is young, her emotions (and by extension; the characters in her mind) are young and inexperienced, so they are prone to becoming frantic and don't even know how their own surroundings work. We as the audience therefore don't know how it works either. This is great as far as the concept is concerned, but I would have liked some comparison with mature minds (such as her parents - who's emotions are barely featured beyond what was seen in the trailer!) to show us why everything is so fraught all the time, like a sixth character for maturity or restraint.

There isn't much attention given to the human characters either; Riley and her Dad have bare bones of character given while Riley's Mum has absolutely no development at all! Asides the memory of a hunky helicopter pilot, that is.

It is an extremely ambitious project to be sure, especially to cater for both young and old. Pixar deliver gorgeous visuals and top quality animation, even the soundtrack stood out to me, and though these are a given nowadays they shouldn't be ignored. 
It really sounds like I found a lot to dislike about the film, but in all honest it is worth a watch! It has a unique and challenging premise for a family film and had me laughing throughout as well as feel a lot of familiarity with the story. 
(Sure, I may have shed a tear somewhere too) 
With the simplicity of the film but the complexity of the subject matter, I just found a lot to nitpick.

Inside Out is a great film, perhaps more angled towards older audiences who will pick up every joke and reference (and there's a lot of them!) but I am not sure I would ever own it in my collection.

Additional Marshmallows: Is it wrong that I found the character of Joy intensely annoying? 

Banter: There is Nothing to Fear, but Fear itself

I have just completed playing one of the creepiest video games ever made: Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Yes, yes, I will maintain banter about film, but the game's incredible ability to invoke fear has me thinking about movies and fear. Tis the season after all!
Growing up I loved intense movies, as a kid I wanted to see Aliens and Terminator, in early teens I watched The Fugitive and Burton's Batman movies. But there were some things that scared me.

Yeah, you know what that is don't you. I must've watched Terminator 2 when I was about ten or eleven years old. It took me a while before I watched this terrifying sequence. Brain numbingly good physical effects...

And the face on the right should look familiar to a lot of people; it's the "face" that can be seen on the surface of Mars. However, it was the template of the X-Files episode Space, and despite how outdated the effects look now... I still remember that episode freaking me out so badly. Actually... I still have trouble looking at that face... why did I put that in the blog...?
...
(Focus! It is only a mountain with a shadow! Only a mountain.... only a mountain....)


Fear is quite subjective; some people find things scary which others might call laughable or entertaining. Some people fear ghost stories, possession, aliens, spiders, or even simply darkness.

Movies have intense ways of burning images and sounds into our minds with fear, and I believe (in my opinion) that the best scary films are those that give you very little. The films that makes your mind fill the gaps; to make you terrify yourself.

I believe this image from Paranormal Activity is burned into my mind (and hopefully not my retina too). Unlike its sequel that moves the viewer's eye about and somewhat gives them breathing space in doing so, the original movie keeps this single shot permanently. The effect? You are hypnotised by watching it. Seconds move agonisingly slowly as you find yourself too scared and anxious to look away, compelled to watch it. Every time this image appeared for the last twenty minutes of that film, my heart sank in dread; what was going to happen next?

What did happen? A fantastic use of shadows, subtle gestures to downright savage, sudden explosions of movement, yet more often than not the film used eerie sights and quiet sounds... Footfalls on distant stairs... footfalls that approach and stop... floorboards creaking, your mind works overtime against your will to imagine what's happening. Yet nothing's there!

The video game I mentioned, Amnesia, works in a similar way. It deprives you of options and puts you directly in harm's way (like Paranormal Activity's frozen perspective) and mercilessly torments you with sounds, sounds and little more. Your mind incubates and develops its own fear.

A great definition of this is comparing the film The Haunting (1963) and its 1999 remake. The remake is a garbage pile of bad acting, shameful CGI nonsense and even a literal Hell. The original shows you nothing; it plays with sound, shadows and unsettling camera work to unnerve you psychologically.

Now... I express my own opinions here about what scares me. The unsettling, disembodied sounds, the grey-black shadows of unfamiliar (yet real) places, the abnormal and terrifying manifesting in recognisable or subtle ways.
What can I say about the "horror" movies that do not scare me? How about Saw for an example.
Saw is not a film gauged for invoking fear... Saw is sickly and gross, and the terms torture porn and "goreno" have been wisely applied to it. Similar to exploitation movies of the 70s, you have to wonder who decided to conceive these scenarios (I'm looking at you too, Human Centipede) or those who buy them to watch repeatedly.
They aren't scary, they are grotesque examples of physical special effects (impressive nonetheless it should be said) and little more, at best forcing you to turn your head in disgust. If I want that... give me the nail-pulling scene from District 9 any day, or Old Boy's tooth-pulling extremes.

But tell me... isn't fear that feeling of helplessness, of being at the mercy of some unseen force, the unknown, the mysterious?
I think so.
And a film that can do that, has mastered something indeed, and while the fright might never be as strong a second time, the sensation lingers...

Sleep well.