(Credit: Netflix)

Razor-sharp sci-fi satire It’s What’s Inside has taken Netflix by storm, bringing a whole new meaning to the term “body horror”. The movie takes the basic idea behind the 2016 Italian psychological drama Perfect Strangers and throws it into the science fiction mixer, with plenty of cult horror genre references to boot. Except that, It’s What’s Inside is far more cutting and incisive than its Italian forerunner.

Snappy, precision-edited visuals cleverly using formal cinematic elements to embody the attention-seeking, attention-deficit age of social media. And even more multi-layered, unreliable narratives lead us through a labyrinthine plot that only becomes more intriguing the denser it gets.

These narratives appear from all directions, jumbling up no fewer than eight different perspectives in a maelstrom of mutual insecurity and suspicion. In an interview with Far Out, actor Gavin Leatherwood, who stars as Dennis in the film, told us, “Every character archetypically represents some figure of our current culture.”

His own is a louche jock type, whose callous attitude to his friends and girlfriends is what sparks the fateful events of the story. Meanwhile, Cyrus is sexually-repressed and addicted to porn, and his girlfriend Shelby has a self-image issue that’s hardly helped by her boyfriend’s behaviour. Dennis’ girlfriend Nikki is also obsessed with her self-image as an Instagram influencer, while groom-to-be Reuben is a people-pleaser who’s all about appearances, and Maya is a pseudo-Buddhist superficially practising spirituality.

One character stands out from the rest, though. As the movie’s director Greg Jardin has explained to us, “Forbes is this enigmatic figure that no one has heard from, and the fact he’s not on social media really helps to juice up his mystique as opposed to everyone else.” His unexpected arrival at Reuben’s pre-wedding party with a machine that can swap the minds of those connected to it into different bodies turns the night upside down. “If you think of your brain as a hard drive, then this just transfers the files,” he reassured them. But what ensued was hardly that simple, as the human consequences of these “transfers” were unleashed.

First Cyrus and Maya make out in the bodies of Reuben and Nikki respectively. Then in the next round of the game Cyrus makes out with Shelby, but again he’s kissing the body of Nikki. And Reuben cheats on his fiancée with another guest, Brooke, as the two of them inhabit the bodies of Maya and Dennis. When they accidentally plummet to their deaths from the roof of the house, all hell breaks loose.

So where does each character end up?

Cyrus calls out Dennis for previously cheating on Nikki with Forbes’ sister Beatrice, and Dennis bites back by exposing Cyrus’ infatuation with Nikki. Shelby, still in Nikki’s body, confronts her boyfriend about his feelings, at which point Maya, in Shelby’s body, reveals, “You were trying to hook up with me when I was in Nikki’s body.”

Nikki herself, inhabiting Brooke’s body, stops what appears to be Forbes fleeing the scene in Reuben’s body with his body-changing device. She and Dennis, still inside Cyrus’ body, then hatch a plan to save themselves. At the same time, Shelby and Cyrus make a pact that she stays in Nikki’s body while he changes to Reuben’s.

The police arrive just as these two plans collide, and the narrative suddenly switches to a furious Beatrice speeding over to the house. When she gets there, she’s greeted by a crime scene. She sees what appears to be her brother Forbes sitting outside, and goes to confront him. It turns out that Beatrice isn’t actually Beatrice, but Forbes, after the real Beatrice switched their minds with the machine before the party. It was Beatrice who arrived at the party in Forbes’ body, having stolen his device.

At the same time, Cyrus, who’s been arrested and charged with the murder after the discovery of Dennis and Maya’s bodies, is back in his own body. So is Shelby, who reveals it was her plan all along to switch them back to their true selves and incriminate him, as revenge for him cheating on her with Nikki’s body. Dennis’ mind is stuck in Forbes’ body, Maya is stuck in Brooke’s body, and Beatrice is on the run disguised as Instagram influencer Nikki. Lastly, Reuben and Brooke lost their lives as they were still inside Dennis and Maya when they fell.

As messy as it sounds, the many threads of this ending are each untangled at the perfect moment, with Jardin demonstrating a dab hand at finishing what he started. For almost all of his characters, it’s ultimately a case of wrong body, wrong time. And wrong piece of the human condition revealed.