Though it doesn’t feature a killer Santa, Inside racks up one of the biggest body counts on this list and arguably some of the most graphic scenes of violence as well. Apart from the fact its set on Christmas eve, the film contains very few of the trimmings found in other seasonal home invasion films.
Trapped with the memories of her husband’s death four months prior Sarah (Alysson Paradis) prepares for her ‘last night of peace and quiet’ as the French suburbs fall prey to a brutal riot and a strange woman (Beatrice Dalle) comes knocking. It’s the perfect set-up: riots, Christmas Eve, pregnant woman, a maniac, and when it all kicks off, it all kicks off. Black Christmas is so effective because its killer abuses the lazy festive environment to his murderous advantage, against both the characters and the audience who buy into the fuzzy visuals. Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury show balls by making their heroine the pregnant only-survivor of a car crash, due to give birth on Christmas day. And oh boy, they do not hold back on account of the baby. Stabbed, battered, whacked with a toaster, Sarah spends most of her time barricaded in the upstairs bathroom making an informed go at surviving. In the end, Paradis proves she’s an able bodied heroin, fighting back with a make-shift flamethrower, a spear, and even performing a self-tracheotomy.
It’s farcical how well Dalle cuts down every single person who comes calling, and often overwhelmingly grizzly. For, if anything, Inside has a nightmarish penchant for incredibly well incepted gore and sadistic deaths. Dalle looks like she’s acting for her life, firing through her a vivid emotional range one second, crushing cats and sniffing baby clothes, and then settling momentarily to woo some visitor with uncanny sedateness. Decked out in black like the high priestess of Christmas Carnage, crazed womb-raider one moment and a distraught mother the next, Dalle embodies the 21st century horror antagonist in a tour de force performance.
Thankfully Inside also has a habit of looking absolutely amazing, using minimal lighting and great camera work to create the sense of foreboding so integral to the film. Whether it be Dalle’s femme fatale visuals, the manic editing, subliminal psychosis, or jarring sound tracking, Bustillo and Maury have crafted a modern classic not to be missed with one of the more nihilistic festive finales on this list.