Review: ‘It’s What’s Inside’ only dazzles on the surface

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The body-swap movie “It’s What’s Inside” dazzles up to the moment its plot gets going.

At that point, confusing storylines involving vapid characters eclipse the previous magic generated by swirling cameras, split screens and black-and-white still images animated in fascinating ways.

Sadly, the switch happens less than half an hour into the movie. But before that, director-writer Greg Jardin and cinematographer Kevin Fletcher display such visual wizardry in introducing a group of college friends who reunite in a remote mansion that you wonder what they might deliver next. Then they employ an “iris shot” — where blackness starts at the frame’s edges then fills the screen apart from a circular point of focus.

Seeing this silent-era staple revived in a Netflix movie about social media-obsessed young people gives a cinema lover the excited sense of “game on.” But then the characters, gathered for a pre-wedding party, play an actual game, and all momentum stops.

But not before Jardin has pulled off one last extraordinary bit, by having Forbes (David W. Thompson), a long-missing friend rumored to now work in tech, show up looking just like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The actor does not resemble the tech billionaire all that much in real life, but genius camera work and lighting turn him into Zuckerberg’s near-doppelganger before Thompson’s mirthless grin does the rest.

Forbes arrived with a suitcase containing a device that his “team” — a term he overuses, suspiciously — invented. Do the old friends from whom he has been estranged for years want to play a game? You bet, Zuck/Jigsaw!

The game involves partygoers inhabiting each other’s bodies via the device. They are still themselves, just in different skin suits. Once the game commences, the movie focuses entirely on how these characters behave in their new guises. This is a problem, because we do not know these people.

Character development took a back seat to the visuals in the film’s early moments. Some characters first appear via social media snippets, preening and spouting banalities. In person, the reunited pals remain exuberantly on the surface, discussing how great everyone looks and thrilled they are to be together.

Pre-body swap, the audience only has a sense of Forbes, groom-to-be Reuben (Devon Terrell), and the film’s nominal protagonist, Shelby (Brittany O’Grady, from “White Lotus” Season 1), and her squirrelly boyfriend, Cyrus (James Morosini).

We meet the couple via actual narrative scenes before the party, when Shelby tries and fails to entice Cyrus into sex through role play. Although the foreshadowing is too obvious, the sequence helps us recognize Cyrus’ whine and Shelby’s disappointment in whatever corporeal form their characters later take. (To his credit, Morosini loses the “why me?” tone when another person inhabits Cyrus’ body.)

The rest of the cast could be doing spot-on impressions of each other like John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in the 1997 movie “Face/Off.” But we will never know. Characters mention “Maya,” and “Nikki” occupying other bodies, but I couldn’t put those names to faces and couldn’t tell if actors playing characters temporarily housing them capture them at all. Also, Jardin gave female characters more common names than the guys; when seeking signposts to try to decipher a movie, “Cyrus” and “Forbes” really help.

The characters rarely attempt anything interesting in their new guises, except trying to kiss each other. This aspect is not particularly fresh, since Forbes’ masterminding of who will switch with whom sticks to gender lines and compulsory heterosexuality.

Characters hardly even take moments to acclimate themselves to, or wonder at, their new bodies, when everybody knows gawking at being in someone else’s skin is a body-swap movie prerequisite. These are just dull people who happen to be in a visually adventurous film.bolly4