The I Inside (2004)

An amnesiac (Ryan Philippe) discovers himself leaping through time between 2000 and 2002 as his past returns to him.This film has a decent cast. Philippe is, of course, the star and this film caught him not long after his celebrity peak. Sarah Polley is excellent, as always, and we also have Stephen Rea. So this is just a great little genre picture in terms of casting.We then get a bit of mystery, a bit of science fiction. It is one part "Butterfly Effect" and two parts "The Jacket". Unfortunately for "I Inside", we would have to say that "Butterfly Effect" is slightly better and "Jacket" is significantly better than both.

Well,well. This is a corker of a movie. I like the fact it makes you think. There are points open to debate. The story starts with a man with amnesia, recovering from a car crash and reeling from losing 2 years of his life. He doesn't recognise his wife etc. Then, game changer, the strands of what happened begin to unravel.... .....spoilers on total plot/discussion: so if im right, then people are correct in saying that he just about survived the accident. the brief moments he was still alive the people he was around (paramedic/doctor etc)were what his brain was trying to process. None of the events past the crash happened. He was dying and his brain was trying to piece together events, people, and explanations. hence the changing events, back n forth- just his brain waves trying to compute. The event doesn't take place between 2000 and 2002. That's his minds starting point and end point of the event due to the time he died being 20:00 and 20:02 being when his brain functions ceased. Rather than the events being seen by him as he experienced them, it is his Minds Eye (I inside, inside eye) which created possible events to join the dots from start point 20:00 to 20:02

I'm surprised that some user comments found "The I Inside" even marginally watchable; there may be some star attraction in Sarah Polley or Ryan Philippe, but they are both ill used, and it is difficult for me, at least, to imagine genuine tears falling from Philippe's eyes as he mourns his existential condition with lines like, "This can't be --expletive deleted-- true!" and a moment later (as we switch to existential condition #2) "This can't be --another expletive-- happening!" (A reflective person, one gathers, this character apparently isn't.) Indeed, the action of the film (such as there is) is so preposterous, one can't imagine it happening anyway; but then this film knows not whether it is sci-fi or thriller, mystery or psychological drama -- no wonder the audience is reduced to focusing on its stars rather than on what they say or do as characters. Sorry -- a 2 star rating to a film that features glamorous actors in unglamorous, unflattering roles, and is absurd in the event to boot.

I hated this movie, but I dislike a lot of movies that others seem to love--like A Beautiful Mind or the Usual Suspects. So if you loved those shows, read no further. I'm only posting this for the benefit of people with similar tastes, so they can avoid this one. At least A Beautiful Mind and the Usual Suspects had some entertainment value. This show has none. Only weirdness, and in a very annoying way.For me, a film has a duty to the viewer to be fair--to not resort to the cheapness of portraying a dream, delusion, or fantasy as reality. It's fine if the character doesn't know what's going on. It's even fine if the audience doesn't for a while, but I find it incredibly annoying to invest a couple of hours into a story only to find out in the end that it was all just a dream.This movie is very cheap in that way. You might like it if you're fifteen years old, don't care if a story makes any sense, and just like weirdness, but I hated. I sensed early on that this was one of those annoying movies that offered no clarity, so I fast forwarded and watched the ending. Well, the ending made no sense and so at that point I gave up on the show and came to IMDb. After reading the posts here and the tremendous amount of confusion this movie caused, I have no interest in watching it all the way through. This is one movie that should have never been made.