The Dead Inside (2005) 💀💀💀½

The Dead Inside is a surprising film in so many ways, beginning with its prior status as essentially being lost media. After being screened at a handful of film festivals (including the HP Lovecraft Film Festival) in 2005 and early 2006, Brian Clement's Frontline Films pressed a limited run of DVDs. Then it simply vanished. In 2019, boutique distributor SRS Cinema distributed a Blu-Ray release which was limited to 50 copies sold. Even today, eBay is virtually the only way to find this film. Having always had a highly limited availability, sitting down to this film should be a rare treat for any fan.

A pair of investigators assembles a small team of researchers to investigate a haunted house which has been plagued by disappearances, hallucinations, and nightmares. With some details feeling straight out of a Lovecraft story, it is a slow burn leading to a series of reveals. There are shadows of both Lovecraft’s From Beyond as well as a Necronomicon stand-in to be found here, and they both work exceedingly well.

Generally classified as a horror film, it really isn’t. Instead, this exudes the vibes of classic British thrillers such as The Stone Tape or a story from Sapphire and Steel. This is a film in conflict with today’s low attention span sensibilities, and it is better for it. Everything exudes atmosphere and rising tension beginning with a sequence set in a cemetery overrun with ghouls. While the creatures are an unnaturally vivid shade of green, there is still an interesting facet to their appearance. Their glossy skin and sharp features, when shown, would look right at home in a Dan Curtis made for TV movie. The rest of the film matches that type of energy, certainly low budget, but not of low quality. This is a hallmark of Brian Clement’s work, making choices that work with a low budget instead of pushing things too far and sacrificing quality. Clement's body of work, which includes the Meat Market series and Dark Paradox — a soft follow-up to this film — establishes him as a director who has learned to make limitations work in his favor.

Our main protagonists are a pair of occult investigators played by Bronwyn Lee and Chuck Depape. Lola Morgandy is Lee’s first real role, and her performance does come off a bit stilted, but not so much as to derail a scene. Teamed alongside veteran actor Chuck Depape as John Katzen, the rough edges somehow manage to fit together. The duo are believable as partners, and Clement’s dialogue keeps them both well grounded yet highly interesting. A large portion of that comes from the insightful elements in the film that resonate with viewers as true, even when not often acknowledged.

For example, there is a discussion comparing an experience to that of knowing something in a dream, waking from the dream, and realizing that this knowledge was merely part of that same dream. Anyone who has ever awoken trying to explain something from a dream and found themselves grasping and phantasmic concepts that defy explanation knows exactly how true this is. The film is filled with small moments like this. In fact, it is small moments building upon one another that makes for such a solid film.

The additional cast are a bit hit or miss. While Theodore Trout turns in an exemplary performance as Professor Fallstead, the same cannot be said of Chris Tihor’s portrayal of Dr. Koeppler. Tihor looks far too young for the role he is meant to portray, and his increasing levels of madness feel more like irritation than true insanity. In Tihor’s defense, the character himself seems intentionally written to be unlikable, which certainly works against him. In the end, the revelatory exposition he's tasked with delivering falls flat in his hands.

An area where the film takes a moment to both shine and fall a little short is in its sound design and soundtrack. There are moments that truly live up to the Sapphire and Steel comparison, where the background sound swells, taking on a life of its own as if an expression of the unseen forces present in the house. The score by the Brothers Hagberg does get repetitive at times, with some of the same key sequences being overly used. This diminishes, but does not eliminate, its effectiveness. Still, when the closing credits roll, the music is so bizarrely catchy that one will find themselves humming it against their will for hours.

Beyond insightful observations relating to the human condition, there are other small pieces that truly turn things up a notch. During a flashback to WWII, bullets can be seen whizzing past the camera in the midst of a firefight. While this is, at first, quite startling and jarring, in mere moments that is forgotten, as this effect serves to give viewers a greater feeling of immersion with the film. Meanwhile, standard fall-back techniques, such as jump scares, are not wholly abandoned, but deployed infrequently enough that they retain their effect rather than becoming a cheap filmmaking crutch.

While no one will mistake The Dead Inside for a big studio picture, it certainly feels like a larger budget film than it really is. Using a limited number of sets and locations, the economy of the filmmaking truly works, delivering a film that feels claustrophobic and threatening instead of one that is cheap and lackluster. Not a film for everyone, it rewards those with more than a modern attention span, delivering a solid ending to those who still have the patience for classic filmmaking and storytelling above frenetic imagery flashed at incomprehensible speed.

2005 ✶ 82m ✶ Color ✶ CA ✶ Director: Brian Clement ✶ Screenplay: Brian Clement ✶ Starring: Chuck Depape (John Katzen), Bronwyn Lee (Lola Morgandy), Chris Tihor (Dr. Koeppler), Theodore Trout (Professor Fallstead), Bettina May (Betty)