By Prison is a harrowing experience. Or, at the very least, it’s shown that way in fiction. From The Shawshank Redemption to last year’s Sing Sing, prison changes a person, forcing them to bare their souls with a rawness that’s indescribable. At least, that’s what Inside is trying to aim for.
Featuring a cast that includes Guy Pearce, hot off his Academy Award nomination for The Brutalist, Inside is trying hard to showcase the ordeals of prison, but from the perspective of a young man recently transferred from juvenile detention. He’s a kid who, quite literally, has been thrown to the wolves, and there’s plenty of potential for soul searching, character drama, and even a potential coming-of-age narrative. There is a little of all of that here… if you can stay awake through it.
Inside
Director: Charles Williams
Release Date: June 8, 2025 (Tribeca Film Festival)
I’ll give Inside this; the film establishes the core dynamic between the three main characters very well. Mel (Vincent Miller) is our POV character, the aforementioned teenager who attempts to find his place in an adult prison after recently transferring there after reaching the age of 18. Given his moral innocence (cause he’s certainly guilty of murder) and his clear teenage angst and aloofness towards his own crimes, he begins to follow two separate people that he views as mentors of sort. There’s the older and weary Warren (Guy Pearce), who is close to making parole and is looking out for Mel from the perspective of a man who doesn’t want Mel to make the same mistakes he made. Then there’s Mark (Cosmo Jarvis), a threatening and disturbed prisoner in for life who views Mel as his apprentice of sorts.
While it takes a while for each character’s personality to come through, they eventually develop their own unique flow and rhythm. Mark has this larger-than-life personality, and Mel oftentimes submits to him out of a mixture of admiration and fear. The way he looks at Mark when forced to play piano for his rambling sermons best captures this, with Mel unsure if Mark will take the insults being thrown at him or violently lash out. Mark is in prison for life, after all. Warren is more dissociated from everything, but oftentimes steps in when Mel is about to get into trouble or if Mel needs protecting, never fully admitting that he truly likes him. They’re basic relationships, but they get the job done.
Sadly, the rest of the movie feels exceptionally dry. It’s an authentic recreation of the Australian prison system, with an almost systematic attention to detail in all aspects of life within the prison. You can tell the amount of research that went into making this prison feel as believable as possible, like how the guards operate, the programs that are available to the prisoners, and even the percentage of ethnicities and races in the prison at one time.
It’s a commendable effort to be sure, but it doesn’t exactly make Inside interesting to watch. Meticulous, sure, but there’s a reason many films often take dramatic liberties with prisons as settings. Even for films that are more grounded, like Sing Sing, they usually opt to present a story that can only be told within the confines of a prison and benefit from that setting. It’s interesting to watch a movie about an inmate rehabilitation program that stars former prisoners. There’s a genuine authenticity to it. The authenticity here feels more synthetic. Yes, the prison in Inside looks, sounds, and operates like a prison, but its story feels like it could be set anywhere. The setting almost feels incidental.
You could forgive all of that if the story is compelling, but after not even an hour and a half, your mind will start to wander. Its presentation and story are very plain and by the numbers, and getting big-name actors like Guy Pearce doesn’t help to elevate the material. I’m very hot and cold with Guy Pearce as an actor and as a director, and he definitely leaves me on the chilled side of things here. Yes, his character is meant to be more jaded and grizzled, but the way he portrays Warren is less tired from all the mistakes he’s made in his life and more just plain old tired.
I want to say there’s a germ of a good idea with Inside. There’s an audience for stripped-back and bare movies that are more realistic than not, but everything about Inside just leaves me wanting more. More variety with the setting. More time spent with the core trio. More bold risks. I can’t even muster up any genuine negative emotions for it. It just left me bored and eager to check out other films from the festival.
