Luke Buckmaster 

Inside review – captivating prison drama with painfully good performances

Guy Pearce, newcomer Vincent Miller and Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis are all remarkable in this unsentimental feature debut from writer-director Charles Williams
  
  

Guy Pearce and Vincent Miller in Inside, 2025 Australian film
‘Inside is very good from the start, but excels in its second hour’ … Guy Pearce and Vincent Miller in Inside. Photograph: Mathew Lynn

I will admit that being a film critic isn’t a dangerous profession – like operating a forklift or fighting fires – but there are some occupational hazards that instil the fear of God in me. One is the epistolary voiceover, whereby a heart-rending letter becomes a form of narration, recited aloud by the character who’s writing or reading it. When I first heard this often dreadfully cheesy device (looking at you, The Notebook) deployed in Australian prison drama Inside, the hairs on my back rose, and I feared another mawkish story about incarcerated men starting again – and so soon after How to Make Gravy.

But to my great surprise, the device – used multiple times by writer-director Charles Williams – works strangely well, adding an interesting, additional layer to a very captivating production.

The trailer for Inside.

As part of his rehabilitation program, 18-year-old protagonist Mel (Vincent Miller, recently in Brendan Cowell’s TV series Plum) is asked to write a letter to his victim as an exercise in expressing empathy and contrition. He responds by tonelessly pointing out that his victim is dead – a crumb of important information dropped so naturalistically that the viewer can’t help but be interested.

The story hinges on a potential event that, if it goes down, will probably mark a profound turning point in Mel’s life – and not in a good way. He has been transferred from juvenile detention to a maximum security prison, where he meets two vaguely mentor-like older inmates: Mark Shepard (Cosmo Jarvis) and Warren (Guy Pearce). The latter seems more pathetic than dangerous, while the former is one of Australia’s most notorious criminals, convicted of a horrible crime when he was just 13. A bounty has been put on Shepard’s head, and Warren recruits Mel as the potential killer.

That dreaded letter-as-voiceover works well partly because, instead of writing from the expected perspective – a person longing to leave prison, Mel’s letter heads in the opposite direction. “We shouldn’t be let out,” he opines in his intensely reflective rumination that suggests evil can be seen in certain people. “Even as kids, [it is] like we’re infested with something that grows from inside, and hurts everyone around us.” Where, character and storytelling-wise, do you go from there?

Perhaps you’re thinking “redemption”. Indeed, there are strong indications that Inside will be about starting again, potentially also about overcoming different forms of imprisonment; of the body and also the soul. But Williams, like his protagonist, seems to have an uneasy relationship with the idea of renewal, and Inside doesn’t have a trace of sentimentality. The director’s overarching position felt, to me, neither glass half full nor half empty; the nuances and grey areas of life have muddied convenient definitions.

At the film’s core is a triumvirate of painfully good performances. As Mel, Miller has a look on his face that keeps rolling around in my mind: a bit stunned, like he’s trying to make sense of the world, and a bit defeated, like he’s resigned to the idea of never having a place in it. Pearce is rock-solid as usual, in a role that contrasts interestingly with his Oscar-nominated performance in Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist. In that film he plays a man whose wealth, prestige and cultivated manners mask his wickedness; in this film there’s no mask at all: Warren is weary, woeful and rough as guts.

And then there’s Cosmo Jarvis, who was recently unforgettable as the potty-mouthed John Blackthorne in Shōgun. Here he delivers a performance seared on to my psyche like a hot iron. Shepard swears he’s a changed man – a born-again Christian, in fact – and he appears to be genuine, even taking the role of a chapel leader delivering sermons espousing the power of salvation. There’s a peculiar energy to these scenes, and Jarvis really is quite something, walking with a heavy swagger and sounding like Tony Martin from Blue Murder with a dash of Tom Hardy’s Bane.

Inside is very good from the start, but excels in its second hour, as the blood of the drama really starts flowing. It’s not always easy to watch, but nor does it whack us on the head with misery and moral turpitude; hope finds a way to creep in.

  • Inside is in Australian cinemas from 27 February, with US and UK releases yet to be announced

 

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