Vlogged to Death

Oh yes, there will be abortion, a mother most fucked indeed, and the perfect synthesis of slasher-flick savagery and J-horror creepiness—but first, a solitary indulgence of irony. It's Christmas Eve in 2005, the banlieues are on fire, and Sarah (Alysson Paradis), an extremely pregnant photojournalist, has just left the hospital for one last pre-popping-it-out checkup. "Enjoy your last night of peace and quiet," cracks her editor as he escorts Sarah to her car. You too, buddy—and mind that scissor-wielding, bodice-strapped psychopath about to get all up in your area.

Enter "La Femme," an implacable fury played by the stupendous bone structure known as Beátrice Dalle. Slipping through the shadows of Sarah's oddly fog-shrouded maison—replete with a black cat padding under a full moon and a 666 address—La Femme surveys the available instruments (darning needle, fabric shears, electric toaster) and contemplates methods of inserting them in mommy's belly or bashing them across her face. Sarah, meanwhile, slips in and out of sleep, floating the possibility that the terror to come "is all just a dream"—a theory rejected with maximum force as Insideshifts into full-blown domestic-siege mode.

I leave you to discover, through covered eyes, the gut-splattering delirium to come. I only insist you do so at the Walter Reade, surrounded by yelps, jitters, and whimpered gasps of "Oh no, they did not," where the high-def cinematography of Laurent Barés can be admired in its full, uncanny light. Genuinely disturbing, poetic and precise, every cut, frame, shock, and thought fine-tuned to freak you out, Insideis a neo-horror near-masterpiece.