Tribeca Film Festival Review: ‘Inside’

Inside

Inside, starring Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Cosmo Jarvis (FX’s Shogun), and Vincent Miller (film debut), a prison drama not for the faint of heart, runs counter to the typical narratives of this genre. Uniquely, the film reveals the contradictions between internal and external freedom we all experience. As a result it emphasizes how imprisonment often starts with the culture’s class system which uplifts money and power. The wealthy and powerful maintain themselves at the top of the ladder. Obviously, this creates a situation where the Indigenous struggle at the bottom with the lower classes. Inevitably, the material impoverishment, social condemnation, and desperation stoke crime. And this corrupts the justice system making it intractably inequitable.

Australian Filmmaker Charles Williams Writes and Directs

Australian writer/director Charles Williams tells us with this film that Australian prisons offer little viable rehabilitation for those who end up there. Williams also references how characters often internally imprison themselves, as they try to shake free from the social order’s class condemnation. The three main characters internalize this social condemnation. Also they internalize institutionalization, a belief system which perpetrates the impossibility of change for the better. If prisoners have to rehabilitate themselves without viable help from the prison system, how can they succeed on the outside? Thus, it becomes trial and error, and luck, rather than bona fide “correction” toward usefulness to society.

Inside elicits audience empathy without maudlin sentimentality. Instead, he reveals the characters’ raw, frayed humanity. By doing this he attempts to lift the audience to a soulful level to place all human beings on the same level, apart from their material successes or failures. So ultimately the film suggests that we stand in these prisoners’ shoes. It elucidates the internal prisons people make for themselves. The jarring setting of a real prison, if re-created authentically, makes us understand people’s attempts to escape to the freedoms of peace, self-love and self-acceptance.

An ‘Inside’ Look into Three Prisoners

The film offers a realistic “inside” look into the lives of three individuals. The unusual sequence of events that brought them together creates a turning point in each of their lives. (We are also reminded of the country’s roots as a prison colony.) Sadly, Australia is one of the few countries that incarcerates children as young as 10 years old, sometimes indefinitely. Mel (Miller) and Mark Shepard (Jarvis) both committed murder as teenagers. Worse, Shepard committed a heinous crime for which the prison population and external world despise him and seek vengeance. On the other hand Warren (Guy Pearce), at the time battling alcoholism, killed someone in a car accident.

By degrees, in spite of the characters’ intermittent, incoherent speech patterns, we learn the backstories of each of the men as they move toward rehabilitation. This begins when Mel transfers from juvenile to adult prison, where first Cosmo then Warren mentor him. We learn how Warren benefited from 15 years of self-help programs. As a result he feels positive and plans to reunite with the son he abandoned when his parole comes up. On other hand Mel, confused, tries to reflect on his life born with the prison backdrop hanging over his head.

Desperate for Reform

Because the world and the prison population hate and despise him for the crime he committed, Shepard searches for a viable way toward change and acceptance. Of all of the characters Williams draws, thanks to Jarvis’ incredible, mesmerizing performance, Shepard stands out as the most desperate, needy, and tragic. Loathing himself, he seeks love by becoming a Pentecostal Christian. With this newfound faith (he speaks in tongues and tries to manifest healing gifts) he searches for redemption and forgiveness from God. He has in fact changed his behavior enough to be moved from maximum to medium security where he meets Mel. When he discovers that Mel plays an electric piano, he persuades him to accompany his church services, where Shepard preaches the love, peace and redemption he seeks.

Though the prisoners go to Shepard’s church services, he has not persuaded them toward God. Indeed, the family of the child he murdered have placed a bounty on his head. So the prisoners who attend his services perhaps go for another reason than soul conversion.

In a second major turning point, Mel freaks out emotionally in front of the other prisoners. The prison social worker suggests Warren mentor Mel and guide him. But by that point Warren must find a way to pay back his extensive gambling debts or possibly lose his life. Though he becomes a father figure to Mel, as does Shepard, Warren tries to elicit Mel’s help with his debts, concerned more for himself than for Mel.

No Spoilers

The last part of the film heightens the tension and suspense. The first part had to move slowly to relay the characters’ backstories. Once those are established, with acute intensity, Williams portrays the dynamic of the prison and Mel, Shepard and Warren’s interrelationships as they attempt to escape their own self-made hells. The conclusion, shocking in its gritty unspooling, nevertheless symbolizes hope, sacrifice, and redemption.

This is one to see for its superb, memorable performances and incisive themes and direction. Look for its U.S. release on June 20, 2025, and on digital and on-demand. It screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.