Taking the body-swapping genre in new directions,It’s What’s Insidedelivers a comical, dramatic, and sometimes horrifying look into the concepts of identity and intimacy. The movie follows eight friends as they come together to celebrate one of their weddings. However, the night takes a dark turn when outcast Forbes suggests they play a game.
It’s What’s Inside
When Cyrus is convinced to attend a pre-wedding party for his old friend, an estranged classmate shows up with a body-switching machine, causing the night to drift into chaos.
From that point on, the characters all participate in body swaps and try to figure out who’s who. This leads to infidelity, gray areas of consent, and eventually, two deaths. By the movie’s end, the viewer has figured out which character is in which body, but they’re left with several bigger questions regarding the characters' morals, motivations, and overall fates.
10Which Parts of the Characters Transfer to the New Bodies?
Forbes’s game involves usinga device he brought to the partyto switch bodies, at which point each character must guesswho has gotten which body. Though the mechanics behind the device are left vague, according to Forbes, “If you think of your brain as a hard drive, then this just transfers the files.” Of course, people are more complicated than a simple system of files, and the transfer process is equally so.
A Question of Identity
It’s apparent that the characters' personalities switch bodies, including certain mannerisms. For example, Forbes' anger transfers to Beatrice’s body, as shown by his road rage and attempt to tackle Dennis, while Shelby’s fear of spiders follows her to Nikki’s body. However, other traits stay with the body, not the person, such as Nikki’s peanut allergy, which is given to Shelby via Nikki’s body. Shelby also gets high while in Brooke’s body because Brooke (while in Brooke’s body) was already high.
This all leads to the question of which traits carry over and which traits stay with the person. In turn, this leads to the question of not just how the device functions, but more generally, how identity does.
9Why Did Beatrice Lie About Being Cyrus?
Toward the end of the movie, the viewer is given a shocking twist: the Forbes who came to the party isn’t actually Forbes. Instead, Forbes’s sister Beatrice took over his body and came to the party seeking revenge. However, rather thanwreak her vengeanceon Dennis, the person who wronged her the most, she seems more focused on Cyrus.
After switching bodies, she pretends to be Cyrus, causing everyone to believe that Cyrus is Forbes. This essentially goads him into cheating on Shelby, as everyone thinks his actions are Forbes’s. Obviously, the decision to cheat falls squarely on Cyrus’s shoulders, but it’s still strange that Beatrice pushed him in this direction.
Beatrice’s True Goals
It’s possible that Beatrice empathized with Shelby and was trying to help her out. However, Cyrus’s ultimate fate is arguably worse than Dennis’s. Dennis is robbed and his body is killed, but earlier, Cyrus had accused him of doing nothing with his life. By taking over Cyrus’s body, he might have a chance to change things, or at least, not make them any worse.
On the other hand, Cyrus is in jail, having been framed for Maya and Dennis’s deaths. While his actions toward Shelby were decidedly gross, he barely had anything to do with what happened to Beatrice. In fact, he’s the one who told Nikki that Dennis had cheated on her. This seems like something Beatrice would havewantedto happen, even if Cyrus’s motivations for doing so were entirely selfish.
8What Did Shelby Mean About Cyrus’s Face?
After another round of body swapping, Cyrus winds up in Forbes’s body while Shelby winds up in Nikki’s. After an argument, Cyrus tries to get Shelby to scratch her eyebrow as a sign so he can identify which body he’s in. He accuses her of being too into the game, at which point she tells him “That’s really crazy. I can see your face in Forbes’s face.” This statement isn’t explored further, but it did leave some viewers scratching their heads.
Surface Level or Something Deeper
It’s possible Shelby was simply trying to distract Cyrus from their argument. It’s also possible she wastrying to be romantic,as shortly after saying this, she kisses him. However, there’s also the possibility that she actually does see Cyrus’s face. If so, this could mean she’s symbolically seeing “what’s inside.” Or, more disturbingly, it could mean that the characters are somehow merging, that additional body swaps could change a person and incrementally make them less themselves.
7What Happened to Nikki?
At the end of the movie, several of the characters attempt to get their bodies back while other characters fight to keep their new ones. After several arguments and scuffles, the machine is turned on, and the characters body swap once more. Shelby and Cyrus return to their own bodies while Maya and Dennis, whose original bodies died, gain new ones. However, not everyone with a living body returns to it, and a shocked Nikki is left in Reuben’s.
A Notable Absence
At the end of the movie, Reuben’s body (Nikki) is the only one missing. Dennis (in Forbes’s body), Maya (in Brooke’s body), and Forbes (in Beatrice’s body) are all seen together. Beatrice (in Nikki’s body) also appears driving off with the device, while Shelby and Cyrus (in their actual bodies) have a tense conversation at a police station. Nikki’s absence is thus notable and makes the viewer wonder where she is.
The audience does get a hint that Nikki left Reuben’s fiancée at the altar, as she is seen in her wedding dress crying. However, nothing more is known about Nikki’s fate, including what she plans to do next.
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6What Is Beatrice’s Next Move?
After Forbes reveals that it was actually Beatrice in his body all along, Beatrice is shown in Nikki’s body, driving away with the device. Forbes implies that Beatrice will continue to body swap, having developed an addiction. This leads the audience to wonder what she has planned and who she’ll body swap with next.
Money, Fame, Power
At the party, Beatrice stole Dennis’s money and Nikki’s body. Now that she’s wealthy and has the appearance of a social media influencer, it’ll be even easier for her to trick other wealthy and famous people into body swapping. In this way, she can continue to accumulate wealth and fame, and with them combined, gain power.
It’s also possible she’ll simply use the device to continue her revenge spree. Either way, by taking the device, Beatrice has opened the door to not only more drama, but a potential sequel.
5How Will Everyone Explain What’s Happened?
The characters ofIt’s What’s Insideleave the party much different than they arrived. Some of them have new bodies while others have anew perspective on life, but all are drastically changed. The characters who lost their bodies will need to lie about who they are, since telling the truth would mean risking someone thinking they’re insane. This means that Maya, Nikki, and Dennis will inherit the lives of Brooke, Reuben, and Forbes — but pretending to be them won’t come easy,
An Ever-Growing Lie
It seems obvious that the police will have some followup questions that will be difficult to answer. So too will the characters' loved ones, especially in the case of Maya, Dennis, and Nikki. The characters' new circumstances and shared experience will continue to stay with them long after the canceled wedding, andonlythem. In other words, they can never reveal these central parts of themselves to anyone else, which means for the rest of their lives, they’ll live a lie.
4Will Forbes’s Coworkers Come Looking for Him?
Beatrice’s theft of Forbes’s device likely spells bad news for Forbes. A device like that probably has some big investors behind it, not to mention the other inventors. It seems likely they’ll come looking for Forbes when the device isn’t returned, which leads to the question of what will happen to him — or possibly, what will happen to Dennis.
Dennis’s Punishment
It’s possible that Dennis will finally get his comeuppance as a result of the missing device. He’s now in Forbes’s body while Forbes is in Beatrice’s, so the latter could always pretend to really be her. Even if the inventors/investors figure out that Dennis isn’t actually Forbes, they might assume his relationship with him means he’ll have information about their missing invention. Additionally, they might force Dennis and Forbes to go retrieve it, which opens the possibility of another sequel.
3Will Cyrus be Convicted?
After seeing his body die, an angry Dennis calls the police on Cyrus’s phone. He then falsely claims that Cyrus killed their friends, and because he’s in Cyrus’s body, he’s effectively faked a confession from Cyrus. At the end of the film, we see Cyrus in jail, showing that he was blamed and arrested for the crime. However, whether the charges will stick — and whether they should — remains unanswered.
Did the Punishment Fit the Crime?
After Dennis’s false confession, Cyrus tells Nikki that he wants to return to his own body in spite of the new risks. He asks her to tell the police that he was delusional, stressed, or otherwise saying things he didn’t mean. Since Nikki disappears at the end of the movie, she never gives the police a statement. Presumably, all the other friends gave one, and they were all ok pinning the deaths on Cyrus.
Realistically, a viewer would hope the cops would smell something fishy. It was obvious the balcony collapsed, and it’s also difficult to come up with a motivation for why Cyrus would kill two of his friends. In fact, his idea to blame stress or alcohol could have easily explained away the confession. Instead, his friends seemingly thought that he deserved jail, and in Shelby’s case, were more than eager to send him there.
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2How Will the Body-Swapping Affect Their Relationships?
Shortly after the characters begin body swapping, Nikki comments that the device could change the world by letting peopleexperience lives outside their own. Theoretically, this would bring people closer as they began to better understand other people’s struggles and goals. However, the body-swapping actually seemed to have the opposite effect on the characters, making them jealous, covetous, and outright cruel to each other. They also lacked respect for the bodies they switched to, making them participate in sexual actions that the body’s original owners might not approve of.
Too Close for Comfort
Now that they’re more permanently switched, the characters might need to rely on one another in order to adapt to their new lives. Whether they’ll remain distant or gain a deeper connection remains unseen. However, at the very least, it seems likely that they’ll grow in understanding, if not closeness. In turn, they might start growing apart from their old reality and relationships, which leads to the question of how their relationship with their own sense of self will evolve.
1Who Else Has Switched Bodies?
When Beatrice drives away in her car, Forbes remarks that body-switching is an addiction. Earlier, Beatrice (in Forbes’s body) also insinuated that a larger number of people have swapped bodies. This opens the door to the possibility that some of those people have stayed permanently in bodies that weren’t theirs. In turn, it leads to the question of what’s (or who’s) inside not just the characters, but everyone else.
Another Potential Sequel
The possibility thatothers have already switched bodiesprovides an opportunity for a sequel, or even prequel. The movie could easily focus on a different group of characters and their experience swapping bodies. Additionally, it’s possible that a new movie could follow the original characters as they continue to switch with new characters. Either way,It’s What’s Insideclearly has several more characters to explore, questions to answer, and storylines to embody.
