this movie is terrible

I watched this movie on an independent cable station acouple of months ago. The reason people think it's about time travel is because that is in the description of the movie. Looking at it from that point of view, it is very confusing. Luckily, I enjoy this type of film and was able to recognize that it is not about time travel

Not really.

spoilers for jakob's ladder, i inside, requiem for a dream

There IS in fact time travel in the movie, although it's not 'real' time travel. Simon believes he's travelling through time and, for all intents and purposes, he is. Unfortunatley for the movie, I can't stand when movies handle time travel poorly. The fact that it's 'all in his head' does not excuse the poor logistics (or the poor move) - the 'time travel' parts immediately made me doubt the calibre of the writer (although he did a pretty good job with Identity).

The non-happy ending of the I Inside doesn't bother me; Requiem for a Dream had a similarly bleak ending, but it was inifitely more powerful because the characters were genuine. Jakob's Ladder has both an interesting plot and character development; if a movie can't have both it should at least have one. The characters from Jakob's Ladder are deep, the I Inside contains mostly character sketches. The plot of the I Inside is poorly constructed - there's loose ends that, if followed, lead to an unsatisfying conclusion (more on that later). The new aspects you mentioned that the I Inside brought to the table are present in Jakob's Ladder, only in sublter ways.

The biblical references in Jakob's Ladder lend a depth to the story - I'm not up on my bible reading but I did enough research to be satisfied that the names in the movie were chosen for specific reasons. There isn't much (any?) of that depth in the I Inside - I DID find it interesting that the apostle Simon becomes St. Peter (the names of the two brothers in the movie) but that discovery led me nowhere. Is Simon's brother a symbol of his own conscience? Was Peter even Simon's brother's real name? There's no context for these names, and that brings me to my major complaint.

This movie is almost entirely based in Simon's 'mind'; the only thing we know for sure is that there was a car accident and there were three bodies involved (I think). There are very few anchors that tie the story to 'reality' (such as the recurring bicycles in Jakob's Ladder) - there is no larger context into which this story fits, and neither the plot nor characters are strong enough to support the movie alone.

i agree regards to the themes in the film...it gives ppl a lot to mull over, and provides primarily a theme of social conscience - do we accept responsibility for our actions and deal with them, or do we go into denial and try to change things.

i do think this film could have got more 'to the point' in a sharper way, without having to cut out too much stuff...they needed to have more focus and clarify scene changes in a less confusing way. Obviously it was the directors aim to confuse and misguide the audience, leaving you to wonder what happened, what is real and what is imagined/hallucinated or a flashaback etc. Although i now understand the ending, i dont think the complex plot served its purpose to mystify...It just made me feel peed off that they took that long to jumble togetehr a mish mash of scenes from the past/present and future!!!

at least with the butterfly effect it had a constant theme - that of changing past events to alter the outcome for the characters. This was the set theme, and did not change, and gave a focus to the film. I dont think BE was crap at all, and certainly not childish. How many of us wish we could turn back time and change things? How many of us wonder how different life would be if we had or hadnt of met a certain person in a specific environment? I know i do think like this at times. And although i am aware that changing the past could change who i am now and who i have relationships with, this film clearly showed one thing - have no regrets. Move forward, deal with the consequences of your actions and improve your life. For, every bad thing we do, we learn from. THAT to me is far from childish...Also, the changes made to the past resulting in bad things for other ppl...well this to me showed that the main character was able to learn that his mistakes CANT be rectified without dangering someone else. I dont think the film ended in the nice way we all believe. The ashton character did not go back to ensure his life would be hassle free,...the ending wasnt happy to me, i felt it was sad. It can be perceived in different ways but i felt the ending symbolised the end of ahston's life, and the beginning of a life that would produce a different child.

I dont see the womb bit as childish either. Its symbolic more than anything - taking us back to the womb to 'start over'. it fit the films plot, nothing else. It wasnt in place to say 'look we can go back to the womb and start out afresh'. It was symbolic of life, beginnings, and in a way - the pre-life and after-life. We are living and breathing, picking up on thigns in the womb, - and once we finally go, we retreat back to a place that is warm and womb like.

Sometimes your shallowness is so thorough, it's almost like depth (Daria)

Andrew,
Sorry for the delay in posting.
As I said in my previous post, there was time travel, even though it was not 'real' time travel. Simon thought that he was time travelling so, for all intents and purposes, he was. Even though he never ACTUALLY travelled through time, for the first half (?) of the movie it is presented as though he is. For that period of time, it seems that travelling through time is a part of the movie and it is not done well. The fact that 'it's all in Simon's mind' doesn't excuse poor logistics.

Time travel aside, this was a poor movie. Please refer to my above post and respond with a reasonable argument if you disagree.

andrewjrausch, dude calm down! maybe its people who don't bother to read the whole thread (and hense observe the development of the poster's argument...) that make reading some IMDb posts so 'loathesome'.

As for your insinuation that not liking a movie that presents itself as complex (be it actually complex and interesting, or pretentious and poorly thought out) makes you either stupid or a precurser to the apocalypse... wow what an original thing to say! I know at least three or four highly intelligent people who have excellent taste in movies (in some cases accompanied by a degree in film theory from a very reputable university) who love watching both 'intelligent' and 'stupid' movies. furthermore they often disagree on the quality of specific movies, but agree on other ones, so how would your argument apply there?

I, myself, enjoy a good character driven film, and would hence enjoy a film with little plot but extensive character development, while someone else who was more interested in plot would probably hate the movie and (in your case) tell me that i was unintelligent because i couldn't see that there was no plot....!

if you're going to argue about why a movie is well done or badly done, having some sort of an ACTUAL ARGUMENT might be a good place to start...

omigod i want to shoot myself
this movie is worst than camp
at least that was funny

Nothing to do with time travel?

Since when could you "look back on your past" and change things you did?
Or did he live two lives at once with slightly different paths?
Sure, he was dead and thus was able to interact with his past, but that means that, as some people have already pointed out, for all intents and purposes he is travelling in time. It doesn't matter if he uses a time machine or his abilities as a ghost or whatever...the results are the same. He could go back to a certain moment in time and interact with the environment... That's timetravel for you.

As for those who mention Requiem for a Dream, and claim that it's got such great and wonderful characters... How come? I thought they were stupid f'ed up brats who did lots of drugs... So what if they died? They were asking for it... Nobody forced them into their situation, and it definately wasn't "bad luck". It was plain stupidity... Me for one am glad they died...suits them for doing drugs and acting like idiots. :P

Anyway... I thought The I Inside was pretty mediocre. The actors did an adequate job, but nothing memorable. The story was a bit on the cliché side and the characters a bit stereotyped...

That's my few cents i guess...