Inside

Director: Charles Williams
Starring: Guy Pearce, Cosmo Jarvis, Vincent Miller, Toby Wallace
Distributor: Bonsai Films
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Strong themes, injury detail, coarse language and nudity.

Transferred from juvenile to adult prison, Mel is taken under the wing of two different inmates. The paternal triangle that forms between them becomes their undoing.

On one hand, the title, Inside, suggests prison. On the other hand, it could also suggest going into the interior of a person, their personality, motivations and behaviour. Both are relevant here.

There is an arresting prologue to the film, a wedding ceremony which we see taking place in the prison, a pregnant mother, a criminal father – and the focus then on the child, now a late teenager, and his being condemned by his criminal father and inheriting his guilt.

The young man is Mel (Miller convincing in his first film role), transferred to a prison, assigned to share a cell with a lifer, sentenced for vicious crimes of rape and child murder. He is Mark Shepard, a powerful performance by British actor Jarvis. But we soon learn that there is a reason for this sharing. Mark has got religion, holding his own services in the prison chapel, more than a touch of charismatic faith. Finding that Mel has his own keyboard, Mel is invited to play it during the happenings in the chapel.

So, already a different kind of prison film. There are guards, there are glimpses of the criminals but not in the traditional way of prison films. There is a greater freedom of movement, many sessions to prepare those for whom parole is coming up, getting them to write a letter of apology to their victims as a justice healing exercise, a different atmosphere.

And yet, a new character, Warren (Pearce) a veteran up for parole and seemingly unwilling to face it, is granted a day’s leave to visit his son, played by Toby Wallace. The visit does not go well. Warren is an enigma. But, he is a gambler. A bounty on Mark Shepard may be a way out of debt and Warren chooses and grooms Mel to be the killer.

Which means the film operates as a psychological thriller, the interactions between the three men, the religious mania of Mark, the manipulation by Warren, Mel and memories of his killing a student in the past, the pressures on him – a dramatic resolution of Mark’s fate.

An interestingly different Australian prison film.