It’s What’s Inside review: Netflix’s taut thriller has a big blind spot

It’s What’s Inside, a fizzy new thriller now streaming on Netflix, is one of those entertaining high-concept movies where the pleasure comes purely from a bold premise taken to exciting, disorienting, tense, or scary places. Written and directed by Greg Jardin, it’s a sharp little film that snaps into place with a satisfying click around the potential ramifications and plot twists inherent in its big idea. Then it doesn’t let go until it reaches its biting denouement.

There’s just one problem: Whether through willful omission or failure of imagination, Jardin completely ignores the most obvious, most interesting direction to explore.

[Ed. note: One broad setup spoiler ahead for It’s What’s Inside — specifically a part of the premise not revealed in the trailer.]

It’s What’s Inside is a dark body-swap comedy with a broad sci-fi premise. A group of eight college friends — four women, four men, all attractive — reunite the night before one of their number, Reuben (Devon Terrell), is set to be married. The aim of the evening is to reconnect and party in the bizarre mansion-cum-art-installation put together by Reuben’s late mother. Reuben has invited a wild card, Forbes (David Thompson), whom none of the group has spoken to since he got kicked out of college for reasons several of them have cause to feel guilty about. Forbes now has a tech career that goes unexplained and unexplored.

Forbes turns up with a suitcase containing a surprisingly old-fashioned contraption that can swap the friends’ consciousnesses. He proposes a party game, somewhat like Mafia or Werewolf, in which the crew swaps bodies, then tries to guess who’s who. After some initial shock and misgivings, the group latches onto the game and starts to vibe on the out-of-body, persona-swapping experience like it’s a wild new designer drug. But soon old resentments, weird dynamics, secret crushes, and devious betrayals start to surface, and things eventually go hideously wrong.

It’s spiky, entertaining stuff, and although it’s played mostly for laughs and thrills, it’s a setup with real thematic teeth. But in order to explain the trick It’s What’s Inside is missing, I’m going to have to mildly spoil what doesn’t happen in the game. It gives away almost nothing of the movie to point out something Jardin is plainly uninterested in exploring. But still, if you want to go in completely unspoiled, with every possible twist still on the table, don’t read on.

There are equal numbers of men and women in the cast (which also includes Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Gavin Leatherwood, Reina Hardesty, and Nina Bloomgarden), which is no accident. Over the course of the game itself, none of the characters swaps bodies with someone of a different gender — or even seems to consider that this is an option. It’s completely off the table. For no reason explained in the script, it just isn’t on the characters’ minds, or seemingly on Jardin’s.

I don’t normally criticize a movie for not being something it is not trying to be, or not doing something I imagined it should do. But in this case, the omission shocked and surprised me — particularly in a movie with a youthful cast, released in 2024, that is otherwise very much playing with questions of sexuality and identity.

Perhaps Jardin was trying to avoid the usual smirking clichés about men becoming obsessed with their boobs as soon as they inhabit a woman’s body (as in the anime movie Your Name), or perhaps he was steering clear of the sometimes toxic current debates about gender. Those are understandable impulses, but in the end, the choice is much to the film’s detriment. It cuts off so many potential avenues for comedy and intrigue, as well as themes and character beats that would complicate the film in interesting ways, giving its darkly comic social commentary a bit more edge.

On a basic level, it’s an issue of credibility — it undermines belief in the characters that none of them would think to try swapping genders, or even suspect for a minute that a body of one gender could be inhabited by the consciousness of another. That seems absurdly narrow-minded for a group of Gen Zers who are otherwise all too happy to trade barbs about sexuality, race, and identity politics. They are all very hetero, too, and no hint of queerness ever creeps into the pervy remixed matchups that take place over the course of the body-swapping game.

A more fluid approach to gender might have enriched the themes It’s What’s Inside does explore. The film’s main thread concerns the relationship between Shelby (O’Grady) and Cyrus (Morosini), which has stalled in a sexless stalemate that maybe has something to do with Cyrus’ lingering obsession with self-possessed influencer Nikki (Debnam-Carey). Jardin uses this private drama to explore notions of fidelity, body image, porn addiction, social media idealization, and the difference between love and fantasy. In that context, passing up the chance to, for example, skewer a male character on the business end of the male gaze by putting him in a woman’s body that’s being leered at seems like a massive missed opportunity.

None of this gets in the way of It’s What’s Inside’s brisk satire and twisty intrigue. It’s pacy, with a gaudy, richly saturated look; Jardin isn’t afraid to lean into his gimmicky premise, but his take on the body-swap comedy has substance as well as style. Jardin, who also edited the film and did the VFX, is known for directing technically elaborate one-shot promos for Netflix content, and he has a flashy style, but he also keeps on top of a complicated story with confidence. If anything, some of the visual devices he employs to help you keep track of the body-swapping are surplus to requirements, because his cast is so good at telegraphing who’s in whose skin, and there’s an infectious enjoyment in watching them imitate each other’s tics and characterizations.

All of that makes It’s What’s Inside simultaneously a roundly satisfying movie and a deeply unsatisfying one. Jardin dives into the value, the seduction, and the danger of inhabiting someone else’s body, but he ignores the most consequential perspective swap of them all. Since neither the filmmakers nor the characters can see past this basic, binary view of gender, the movie’s sly provocations and pointed conclusions end up ringing hollow. These people can swap bodies all they like; they’re still stuck with the same old worldview.

It’s What’s Inside is streaming on Netflix now.