Bodies Bodies Bodies v. It’s What’s Inside: The Ultimate Smackdown

Bodies Bodies Bodies has been written off as another Gen-Z horror flick, while It's What's Inside continues to gain praise as “elevated horror,” despite the fact that one film (It's What's Inside) is practically a replica of the other. Let's straighten this out.

It’s What’s Inside follows a group of high school students who obtain a mysterious device during a party that allows them to swap bodies with each other, leading to increasingly dangerous consequences as they discover dark secrets about themselves and their relationships. It is an oversaturated, cluster-fuck of a film run red with plot holes, arc shots (basically the camera keeps spinning), strange scoring, and entirely unpalatable, unmemorable characters in attempt to pass itself off as art-cinema. It’s a cop-out. 

Going into the film, I had only heard great things from seemingly everyone online. Upon further inspection, I realized even a significant portion of “positive” reviews didn’t have much to compliment the film on, aside from its central concept. 4 stars or 2, a large portion of its reviews seem to say the same thing, “Props for an incredibly creative concept but...” First of all, don't let anyone fool you into believing It's What's Inside is breaking new ground. Sure, it throws eight people into the chaos of body-swapping instead of two, but that’s hardly revolutionary. From 13 Going on 30 to Freaky Friday, we've seen this story before–and usually done better. 

To further dilute the film’s facade of originality, you must consider its severe and undeniable overlap with Halina Reijn’s 2022 film, Bodies Bodies Bodies. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies follows a group of rich Gen-Z friends celebrating an incoming hurricane with a party that turns deadly, weaponizing their media-driven anxieties and performative activism against each other as they try to identify a killer among them. What starts as a familiar slasher setup evolves into a razor-sharp satire of modern youth culture, with every murder accusation revealing how their supposed close friendships are built on superficiality, privilege and lies. The film commits fully to both its genre thrills and its social commentary–delivering genuine disturbances and laughs while exposing how its characters' overreliance on therapeutic language and social performance ultimately leaves them unable to face real human connection and conflict. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies and It's What's Inside both kick off when an outsider friend arrives late to a gathering—in Bodies, it's Sophie, fresh out of rehab and accompanied by her new girlfriend Bee, while in It's What's Inside, it's both Shelby, who arrives with her boyfriend Cyrus, and Forbes, who appears last with mysterious new technology in hand. Both films trap a selection of privileged, social-media-obsessed characters in a single location where the arrival of an estranged friend triggers a descent into chaos: Bodies through a murder-mystery party that turns deadly real, and It's What's Inside through a consciousness-swapping device that forces confrontations with hidden resentments and betrayals. Like Bodies, It's What's Inside attempts to examine generational dynamics and fractured friendships, though it takes a more surreal approach through its sci-fi premise rather than slasher conventions.

Although the ode to Bodies Bodies Bodies appears strikingly intentional and referenced throughout It's What's Inside in a manner one could almost describe as mirroring, it neither reads as an inspired nor comedic spin-off of the film. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to understand the intention behind the creation of a film so precisely replicant of Bodies. Taking note of constant parallels between the two films throughout my viewing experience of It's What's Inside, only to come out confused as to why the film was even made in the first place, was a real let down. 

Part of the reason the ultimate intentions of this film are so difficult to dissect is its utter lack of stylistic depth. It's What's Inside is chock-full of cinematography and editing techniques you might generally associate with experimental or artistic cinema. In fact, it is lousy with the stuff. It’s just one thing after the other in this film; slow motion zoom-ins, jump cuts, arc shots, distorted reflections, cross-cuts, low-key lighting, split-screens, etc etc. Sure, this all further manifests a sensation of chaos and distortion for the viewer, but it’s so constant, quick and ever-changing that it translates as random, forced and self-indulgent. Visually stylistic elements particular to art-cinema generally relay a sense of purpose or emphasis when employed. It’s What’s Inside, frankly, throws them all in your face in an attempt to appear artistically inventive and intelligent… as if the whole idea was to “make it look cool.” 

Now, if you're going to strain for status of art-cinema or 'elevated horror' with a film such as It's What's Inside, you have to earn that distinction through genuine thematic resonance. The film's imagery and quick, disorienting pace signal art-house aspirations, but without the substantive philosophical or social commentary that elevates works beyond their genre trappings. The film seemingly attempted to portray this idea through its characters. Each of them appeared to retain notable societal privilege, social or media-based popularity, and by consequence, severe flaws in general likeability or intelligence. However, this turned out to lay the groundwork for the film’s subsequent failures in literacy or relatability. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies, for example, proved itself considerably more successful in exploring the complexity of seven young, largely unlikeable characters. Through ample and subtle dialogue, the film reveals its characters layer by layer: their personalities, relationships, and behavioral tendencies. We glimpse into each of their backgrounds and observe how their privileged upbringing has shaped both their worldview and their interactions with one another. If you remember that particular scene during which four characters fight over possession of a gun while brutally psychoanalyzing each other and shattering the illusions on which their relationships rely, you know exactly what I’m talking about. 

In contrast, It’s What’s Inside offers virtually nothing of the sort. Instead, we receive basic and relatively meaningless information on each character, such as Nina… who’s never not faded. That’s pretty much all we get on her. The body-swapping sequence naturally demanded significant screen time for navigational purposes, but that's no excuse for such thin character development. We deserved more context to help us understand and maybe even empathize with these people in order to invest ourselves in their fates. I could not have cared less if any of them met a cruel or unwarranted end because truthfully, I hated every single one of them without reason to feel otherwise. Honestly, this film could’ve lowered its ambitions and been much more effective with five or six central characters max. 

Not only did the film lack character-development, but it was similarly void of depth in its ultimate plot points. As we near the end of the body-swap mayhem, there laid one final, overarching obstacle: Shelby, the only non-conventionally “attractive” girl in the bunch decides she wants to remain in the body of a thin, blonde, seemingly vapid influencer–the very woman her boyfriend had secretly desired all along. Rather than challenging beauty standards or exploring deeper themes of identity, the film reinforces a played out trope which highlights the most superficial ideals of desirability or more accurately put... fuckability. This is not to say that a film requires deeply pretentious and convoluted allegorical meaning in order to classify as art-cinema or elevated horror, but that it should merely deviate from trite, severely mainstream motifs. Alas, It’s What’s Inside basically epitomizes what it means to beat a dead horse. 

What we're left with is a film so preoccupied with looking profound that it forgets to actually be profound. It’s What’s Inside is a disappointingly predictable film, overloaded with uninspired plot-twists that might further its madness, but strip it of substance. The movie ended and I found myself still trying to decipher who switched bodies with whom both times everyone swapped. Audiences should not have to work this hard throughout the entire film trying to follow the foundational plot, leaving no room for personal interpretation or emotional impact. Not to mention, this was all an attempt at replicating a subgenre of sublime cinema. You cannot convince me this film lived up to its own expectations. Bodies Bodies Bodies, however, honed in on its horrific and socially commentative intentions, and crafted a nearly perfect balance between the two. These two films are far from equatable. Although many might disagree, Bodies is the film to recommend to anyone looking for a modern cult-classic, art-house cinematic success. That is how it’s done. 

All that being said, this isn't meant to be just a critique of "It's What's Inside." I wrote this article with the intention of exemplifying a larger problem plaguing the film industry right now: the commodification and “mainstream-ification” of art-cinema. It is not that art-cinema doesn’t deserve popularity, but that not every creator is naturally inclined to that style. However, the moment anything resonates intensely with the masses, suddenly everybody wants to take a stab. At the moment, art-cinema has reached its era of imitative dilution and personally, I’m just tired of it.