It's What's Inside: The Rage of Cowards
You don't need a new body. You can just leave.
“If the grass is greener on the other side, maybe you should water your own lawn.” - Ghandi, probably
There are few things in life as repulsive as self-pity, a person crying about their circumstances while doing nothing to change them.
For some people, the self-pity has moved beyond their circumstances and has encompassed their whole being: they no longer hate their life; they hate themselves.
And the strange part about it is that many of these people are just out living their lives. Far from being curled in a ball of cookie-dough-eating depression, they’re seeing movies, chatting with friends, and going to work.
But make no mistake, they hate themselves. And they’d do anything to be someone else.
It’s cool to dump on the state of modern movie making, but I’m happy to say there are some bangers out there, and last year’s It’s What’s Inside is one of them.
The movie asked us to consider, “What if you didn’t have to be yourself? What if you could be someone else?”
The premise of the movie is that a group of friends get together for a party, only to find that an unexpected guest arrives with a machine that can put your consciousness into someone else’s body.
And you stay in that other person’s body until you activate the same machine again, undoing the switcheroo.
If you watch the trailer, you can see it’s a pretty big group of friends, and they vary in their levels of self-esteem and esteem for others. And boy, can you see the difference when they get a taste of being in someone else’s skin.
I generally spoil movies in my articles, but for this one, I’ll keep the spoilers to a minimum. I liked it a lot, and I think you probably will too, so I don’t want to take the punch out of the ending.
A Shitty Life You Keep Choosing
It’s an ensemble cast, but the primary focus of the film is on Shelby, an insecure 20-something who is fundamentally shaped by jealousy , specifically for her friend, Nikki, who is a massive social media influencer.
Nikki is also “the one who got away” for Cyrus… Shelby’s current boyfriend.
Given what an absolute shit bag Cyrus is, it’s easy to feel sorry for Shelby—to view her as the victim. But as we find out, she has stayed with him for NINE years. Nine years of no ring. Nine years of him preferring to masturbate than have sex with her.
And this isn’t a frigid girlfriend situation either.
The first time we even see Shelby, she’s wearing a red lingerie and blonde wig (mimicking Nikki’s mannerisms) and is excited to start a sexual role-play with her boyfriend. She wants to entice him so he won’t need the porn.
Except when she walks into the bedroom in her wig and lingerie, she finds Cyrus masturbating. She can’t see the screen on the laptop, but we can.
He’s cranking it to Nikki.
The film invites us to feel bad for her… and we do. It’s hard not to. She’s a timid, passive person, a quality many men actually seek out in a girl. Cyrus, on the other hand, criticizes and mocks her for it.
And Shelby is aware she’s being mistreated. Later on, she laments that Cyrus spent years of gaslighting making her insecure about her own body. This undermining of Shelby's self-confidence resulted in her becoming increasingly dependent on Cyrus's validation while simultaneously making her feel inadequate.
It’s plain he doesn’t actually like her. He never did, and we don’t need to wait for the script to spell it out for us. It’s obvious in the first five minutes.
But still she stays. Even as she knows he never actually wanted her.
It’s the sick relationship dynamic that she has chosen, telling herself she has no power to change it.
Being a Victim Doesn’t Mean You’re Good
The funny thing is that Shelby never wanted to participate in the body-swap game. She only did it because Cyrus pressured her into it. But wouldn’t you know, Shelby ends up in Nikki’s body during the second round of the body-swap game, and only then does it occur to her that she has power over what she does.
Part of the reason she put up with Cyrus’s crap is because she idealized her friend's life to the point of obsession: “I am not Nikki, therefore I am not good, therefore I deserve to be mistreated.” It’s gross, obviously, but there’s a social media aspect to all this that hits the mark for Zoomers and younger millennials.
But spending time in Nikki’s body, and everything that happens afterward, doesn’t change who Shelby is—it reveals who she always was.
Her “liberation” from Cyrus at the end of the movie is controversial as hell, and for good reason. Yes, she breaks free from her former passivity… but in a way that is far outsized to what Cyrus deserves.
Especially since she could have left at any time!
Cyrus was an asshole, a sneering, condescending prick who settled for a girl he didn’t like because the one he actually wanted didn’t want him back. That’s mean and it’s sad. But the list of grievances Shelby had to justify her actions only existed because of her own choices.
Her act of betrayal represents both her revenge and her liberation from a relationship built on lies and manipulation. And some (a lot?) of the girlies cheered at what she did.
I guess that’s an easy reaction to have. Better that than to reflect on the reality that all those boys who treated you like Cyrus treated Shelby only did so because you let them. It’s easier to laugh at a shit head getting an unexpected ending than it is to ask yourself: what unpleasant reality am I accepting in exchange for security/attention/lust?
It would be even more difficult to ask yourself: What would happen if I just stopped? What if I just walked away from this bullshit and did something else?
But maybe you should. If you don’t, you may wake up one day and realize that you have become Shelby. And I mean that in the worst possible way.
The mark of an interesting review is that you don't need to watch the movie to appreciate it. Well done.
Oh, this made me think of a Twilight Zone episode, "Uncle Simon," where I came to a similar conclusion about the main character, Barbara. She's lived for decades with her cruel, verbally abusive uncle (played by Cedric Hardwicke, best remembered as Pharaoh Seti in the Ten Commandments). Why does she live with him? Because he's rich and she wants to inherit his money. So she takes care of him, year after year. She goes nowhere and does nothing else.
I thought the question he snarkily asks her at one point was telling. Something along the lines of, "Did you build anything today? Create anything? Make anything?"
Of course not. She has no ambition, no drive, no dreams. She wants only one thing: her rich uncle's money. When he dies, she triumphantly shouts,
"I have sowed! And now I intend to *reap*!"
But Uncle Simon has a nasty surprise for her: upon his death, his lawyer reveals the robot Uncle Simon built in his secret laboratory. The robot is imbued with Simon's personality. It, too, insults Barbara. And mistreats her. But she is obligated by the terms of the will to take care of the robot, and is not allowed to redecorate the house. This is enforced by weekly visits from a university official -- the university will receive all of Simon's money if Barbara violates the terms of his will.
She is not the victim, although she sees herself as one. She could have lived her own life, built something for herself. Barbara could have created her own works, if she had it in her. But instead she chose passivity and greed and entitlement. The narrator makes it quite clear she's not "good" in the closing lines: "... [Barbara] discovered belatedly that all bad things don't come to an end, and that once a bed is made, it's quite necessary that you sleep in it ..."
Shelby, as described in your post, reminds me of a mentality I've tried to steer certain friends away from. If her story were a cautionary tale, like "Uncle Simon," I would love to recommend it. But I gather that's not the direction the movie went in. Which is too bad, because it sounds like the movie *could* have gone there, but lacked the conviction (or insight) to do so. Thanks for the review!