Directed by Vasilis Katsoupis, Inside is not your typical survival thriller. It is a slow, disorienting spiral into solitude, where the real antagonist isn’t the locked door, but the quiet unraveling of the mind behind it. Willem Dafoe plays Nemo, an art thief whose calculated heist goes sideways and traps him in a sterile, high-rise penthouse that quickly turns from luxury to labyrinth. The space is immaculate, well-curated, and utterly indifferent to his presence. As days stretch into weeks and eventually into something immeasurable, the apartment becomes a pressure cooker of malfunctioning tech, dwindling resources, and creeping madness.
Dafoe is magnetic here. He is raw, twitchy, and stripped of vanity. With no one to talk to and nowhere to go, Nemo turns inward. He sketches, he scavenges, he hallucinates. The penthouse becomes his canvas, his prison, and his confessional. Every cracked pipe and flickering light feels like a message from a God that isn’t listening. The film doesn’t rush. It lingers on and watches him break down, get back up, and break again.
And then there’s the ending, which is so opaque and unresolved. Sad, too. Katsoupis doesn’t offer closure. He offers a question: What does survival mean when no one’s watching? That said, Inside is about endurance, ego, and the strange beauty of collapse. It asks how much of ourselves we’re willing to lose before we admit we’re actually trapped and there’s no escape. This is the ending of Inside, explained.
What Happens in ‘Inside’?
Focus Pictures
Inside follows an art thief named Nemo, who breaks into a luxury penthouse in New York to steal valuable artwork, the key of which is a self-portrait worth seven figures. However, things quickly go awry when Nemo accidentally triggers the alarm, trapping him inside. Fearing capture, his two accomplices abandon him, forcing him to find his own escape. He doesn’t, but the police never show up. Nemo soon discovers himself trapped in the penthouse with no easy means of escape and limited resources. On top of that, the thermostat is faulty, repeatedly shifting the apartment temperature from unbearably hot to freezing cold. In this way, Nemo’s time in the penthouse is a grueling ordeal.
Nemo passes the time trying to escape, his main hope being a sconce on the ceiling, which he constructs a massive tower of furniture and various tools to remove the light source. He also watches the CCTV feed of various employees around the building, one of whom he becomes attached to after forming a story for her. He also creates various art projects, as he is an art lover himself. An indeterminate amount of time passes, though the duration can be inferred from the fullness of the bathtub and toilet he fills with his waste.
Over time, he begins to suffer the effects of his long isolation. He starts to detach from reality through different hallucinations, with emphasis on a higher power, one of which causes him to wake with a newfound resolve to escape. Unfortunately, the sconce proves to be impenetrable. In a last-ditch effort, he uses broken glass to set a fire that triggers the building’s sprinklers. But this does not trigger the fire alarm, and soon the penthouse starts flooding. The final scene of Inside sees Nemo climbing his tower of furniture one last time. The scene then cuts to the sconce falling to the ground below. The viewer never sees Nemo exit the room through the sconce, leaving his survival ambiguous.
God and Technology in ‘Inside’
Focus Pictures
Before exploring the ending of Inside, it is important to examine the two key themes that run throughout the film. Throughout, there are allusions to a higher power. Some controlling presence has trapped Nemo in this ordeal as punishment for his crimes. The large tower he builds can be interpreted as a sinner’s climb to heaven, and his endless prying at the sconce is his attempt to pass through their gates. Heaven’s presence is felt when he stares into the vents as the defective AC system has been bearing down on him with relentless heat, only to finally switch to cool air, which blows on his face.
And where there is God, there is the Devil, whom Nemo represents, as seen when he looks into a portrait that vaguely resembles him, this figure being the man downstairs himself. Viewers who notice these references — religious or not — can appreciate Katsoupis’ artful storytelling. But is this higher power God, as commonly understood, or the flawed engineering that has trapped Nemo?
Above anything else, the root cause of Nemo’s suffering is the failure of technology. The penthouse’s security systems are foolproof at preventing theft. There’s not even a 1% chance that someone like Nemo would succeed in escaping with the valuable art. But take into account what it has done: it has locked him within the confines of the penthouse, taken all manner of comfort, but never alerts the police. As advanced as it is, it’s only designed to confine. Perhaps it was supposed to alert the authorities, but this function clearly failed. Consider that, in the modern age, people place much of their faith in technology for daily life. When it fails, all hope is lost. In this sense, it can be said that technology is God. When it does what it’s built for, it’s heaven on earth. When it fails, it’s suffering.
‘Inside’ Ending, Explained
Focus Features
With the themes in mind, consider the ending. Inside ends with the sconce falling to the ground, but it never reveals whether Nemo escaped. The likely answer is that he did, with the metaphorical gates of heaven finally opening for him to ascend and leave the penthouse. But why wouldn’t the movie show that? Well, perhaps it wasn’t the point. The overall message from this ambiguous ending is unclear, but the overarching theme is hard to ignore.
Throughout, Nemo is punished by the penthouse, which never allows him a moment of comfort, but in the end, he escapes his metaphorical hell by looking up. Before leaving, he reflects that to create, one must first destroy. Nemo leaves behind his two greatest creations, the portraits he made, the broken remains of the penthouse, and his tower reaching to the sconce. For everything that comprises life today, something has to be destroyed. That goes for technology as well as art. Whatever happened to Nemo, he left behind his greatest creation. It is either a tower to salvation or a representation of his failed ordeal.
Where To Stream ‘Inside’
Inside is currently streaming on Peacock, and is also available to rent or buy digitally through Prime Video and Apple TV. Whether you’re diving in for the first time or returning for a second look, it’s a film that rewards close attention. From Katsoupis’ meticulous visual design to Willem Dafoe’s solitary performance, every element of the movie demands praise.
Release Date
March 17, 2023
Runtime
105 Minutes
Director
Vasillis Katsoupis
Writers
Ben Hopkins
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