Inside Out

Inside Out details the turmoil that unfolds within a seemingly idyllic suburban neighborhood after a mysterious psychiatrist (Eriq La Salle’s Doctor Peoples) moves into a nearby house (in the middle of the night, no less), with the character’s arrival provoking paranoia and eventually fear among many of the quirky residents (including Steven Weber’s Norman, Kate Walsh’s Tyne, and Nia Peeples’ Maria). It’s a relatively promising premise that’s squandered right from the get-go by filmmaker David Ogden, as the writer/director has infused the proceedings with an oppressively off-kilter sensibility that’s reflected in virtually all of the movie’s various attributes (with the most obvious example of this Jamie Christopherson’s almost astonishingly obnoxious score). There’s subsequently little doubt that one’s efforts at working up any interest in the characters’ ongoing exploits fall completely and utterly flat, with the residents’ frequently inexplicable behavior only compounding the film’s pervasively inauthentic atmosphere (ie two seemingly heterosexual women are revealed as gay). By the time Weber’s character, having ludicrously succumbed to total paranoia, shaves his head, Inside Out has concretely established itself as a misguided and misbegotten endeavor through and through – with the big revelation that closes the proceedings as underwhelming and pointless as everything leading up to it.

1/2* out of ****