Greg Jardin on his genre-bending debut feature ‘It’s What’s Inside’
Bringing his feature-length directorial debut, It’s What’s Inside, to the screen has been an arduous journey for writer, director, and editor Greg Jardin. Production took place over 18 days in November 2022, the genre-bending thriller premiered at Sundance in January 2024, and it finally arrives on Netflix on October 4th, but its origins go back much further.
With that in mind, the filmmaker has mixed emotions about the finishing line being within sight. “It’s really bittersweet,” he confessed. “On one hand, it’s amazing that people are going to be able to see it since we shot it in a bit of a vacuum. When we shot it, we had no distributor or really, idea, as far as what was going to happen. As far as that goes, it’s incredible.”
The downside is that the cast and crew have finally gone their separate ways, leaving Jardin “sad that we’re not going to be able to hang out as much after this.” However, with Netflix handing over the princely sum of $17million for the distribution rights, the streaming service clearly has huge confidence in the project, which comes with inevitable pressure attached, ultimately vindicating the years of ups and downs It’s What’s Inside navigated to reach that point.
“I mean, I’m still shocked that we even got into Sundance,” Jardin admitted. “I was shocked that someone was interested in buying it, and then I was shocked that multiple people were interested in buying it. It’s a dream that so many people were interested in this one thing because I had so many years of rejection trying to get it made. I wrote it in 2016. We didn’t actually get financing until 2022, and those six years were a rollercoaster of hope, essentially.”
“In terms of pressure, I guess I haven’t thought about that much yet, but now that you mentioned it? Yeah.” Still, he sees nothing but the positives. “I mean, do I expect to have that Sundance experience replicated again in the future? No, not really; that seemed like a flash in the pan. I hope I have the opportunity to make another movie, and I hope that people respond to it as much as they did to this one.”
It might be Jardin’s first feature, but he’s helmed an extensive collection of short films and promotional videos, many of which came under Netflix’s banner. In a way, his debut movie landing on the streamer feels serendipitous, something that wasn’t lost on the filmmaker.
“It feels really special in this full circle kind of way,” he said. “I’ve been working essentially as a freelancer for Netflix, in their marketing wing, for the past seven, eight years, and it’s been a great experience. And so now getting to be on this other side of it, where I’m now working for Netflix as a filmmaker, yeah, it’s felt really special and full circle. And everyone there is wonderful, and seeing their enthusiasm for this film has been really moving and special, and I’m very, very honoured by it.”
One of It’s What’s Inside‘s recurring themes is the artificiality of social media and online existence, and one of the biggest issues for any streaming movie is trying to hook viewers to the point they don’t get distracted and end up scrolling through their phones. Fortunately, the twisty thriller demands undivided attention, even if speaks to a much bigger problem with at-home viewing.
“They’ve previewed it for a number of people, and I’ve heard feedback from a number of people that they did not look at their phones,” which is high praise in the age of streaming. “As I think any filmmaker will tell you, the fact that you’re competing with people being distracted these days is not something that is exactly welcome. It’s just the state of the world now. So, yeah, I hope that it holds people’s attention enough so that they’re not distracted and look at something else.”
Anyone taking their eyes off It’s What’s Inside, even for a second, doesn’t come recommended. The story plunges eight college friends into a night of existential and psychological chaos where allegiances, loyalties, personalities, and psyches are constantly evolving, and switching off runs the risk of missing out on some major developments tied to both plot and character.
“I think there is a lot of setup and payoff in the film,” came Jardin’s summation. “I’m biased, but I don’t personally think it’s a film where you can get up and go to the bathroom and sit back down and be able to fully catch up and not have missed anything.”
As mentioned, there are eight main characters in It’s What’s Inside – Brittany O’Grady’s Shelby, James Morosini’s Cyrus, Gavin Leatherwood’s Dennis, Nina Bloomgarden’s Maya, Alycia Debnam-Carey’s Nikki, Reina Hardesty’s Brooke, Devon Terrell’s Reuben, and David W Thompson’s Forbes – but once the pre-nuptial party goes off the rails, more than eight performances are required.
It was a tall order for the cast, but Jardin felt blessed to get a week of rehearsal time with the stars, which was “one of the things that I was pushing for really hard with our producers.” In addition to working one-on-one with cast members, they were also encouraged to work amongst themselves, which fed directly into the writer and director’s approach to letting the performers shape the protagonists.
“My POV is, once the actors were cast, now they have almost more agency over the characters than I do, and every actor worked with other actors in both teaching other actors and learning from other actors, the sort of ‘isms’ of their main characters,” Jardin elaborated. “But had we not had that week of rehearsal, I don’t think the film would have come out in the way that it did.”
It’s What’s Inside is a difficult movie to quantify by design, with the narrative running through multiple genres covering drama, comedy, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, murder mystery, whodunnit, and more, often in the space of a single scene. It’s a delicate tonal balancing act but one that Jardin was well aware of throughout the various steps of the process.
“I think it’s just something that happens in phases,” he reflected. “When I was writing the script, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about the thriller tone or the visuals, so much as I was just thinking about the characters and some comedy aspects. When I put my director hat on after it was done, I started thinking about how to make it feel like more of a thriller. Once we really started prepping the shoot, I was working with my DP, Kevin Fletcher, then we started to really hone in on the look.”
“It essentially came down to, ‘How can we make this look, feel, and sound different than any other one-location movie?’ Specifically, any other ‘people in one house movie,'” he continued. “It’s just a thing that happened in waves, and once you have the ball rolling, the tone kind of reveals itself from scene to scene.”
Reflective of modern society’s obsession with social media, Thompson’s Forbes serves as the great disruptor of the group. None of the other seven seem entirely sure he’s even going to show up because he’s not an online presence, but when he does, he’s the one carrying the mysterious briefcase that turns their night – and their lives – upside down, which plays into another one of It’s What’s Inside‘s major recurring themes.
“Certainly, in this day and age, if someone is not on social media, it’s hard to ‘research’ them or ‘vet’ them, and that inherently makes you a more mysterious person,” Jardin agreed. “Translating that idea into the movie, Forbes is this enigmatic figure that no one has heard from, and the fact he’s not on social media really helps to juice up his mystique as opposed to everyone else, who more or less, all of our cast of characters is somewhat familiar with what they’ve been up to thanks to social media.”
That sentiment opens the film with O’Grady’s Shelby and Morosini’s Cyrus experiencing relationship strife, with the latter appearing to harbour ongoing feelings for Debnam-Carey’s Nikki, the influencer who presents an idealised life on the internet. It might be an eight-character piece, but it was important for Shelby and Cyrus to serve as anchors It’s What’s Inside could always return to, especially when the shit hits the fan.
“It’s an ensemble film, but it was very important for me to have a sort of central relationship, in this case, a relationship in crisis that is being tested by the events of the evening at the centre of the story,” Jardin elucidated. “The whole time, it was all about, you want to service all these other characters, but really it’s about how these characters affect Shelby and Cyrus’ relationship and put it through the ringer. It was very important to bookend the story with their relationship.”
It’s What’s Inside is a very difficult movie to try and describe, but for this writer’s money, the best way to think of it is Brian De Palma by way of David Lynch, with some Agatha Christie sprinkled on top. Not only did Jardin endorse that assessment, but he’d be happy to pinch it for marketing purposes.
“Hell yeah, that’s awesome, I’m going to steal that,” and it wasn’t too wide of the mark, either. “We watched Blow Out, me and a bunch of the crew members. His use of split screen was a huge influence. David Lynch is probably my favourite filmmaker of all time. I mean, I have been describing it as a sci-fi thriller with jokes. I initially pitched it as Freaky Friday meets The Big Chill by way of Black Mirror.”
Jardin loves the indescribable side of cinema, and for him, watching something that’s impossible to categorise feels “just like when you’re eating a dish with similar ingredients, but the ingredients altogether make a new experience.” Mission accomplished on that front, but could it be a dish he’s willing to cook for a second time?
After all, the conceit of It’s What’s Inside is wide open for further interpretation, even if sequels aren’t at the forefront of his thinking. “I certainly was looking at it as a standalone thing,” came the response, with a caveat. “I am shocked, pleasantly surprised at how many people have asked or just posed interest in seeing a sequel. Yes, there are certainly opportunities to continue the story, and maybe one day that’ll happen.”
With his feature debut under his belt, originality will remain the priority moving forward, with Jardin hypothesising that even if he were handed carte blanche to make anything he wanted with unlimited funds in place, “I want it to be something where I feel like it wouldn’t exist were it not for me.”
“If you were to tell me, ‘Go shoot something tomorrow, here’s a bunch of money’, I would probably come up with a high-concept sci-fi idea that looked at human emotion the way It’s What’s Inside did,” with Jardin enjoying the experience of working on a smaller scale. His second film “will probably be in the anxiety chic tone that It’s What’s Inside is in,” with the sexiness of having a monstrous budget carrying its own set of risks.
“Eternal Sunshine is one of my favourites. Her is one of my favourites. Whiplash is one of my favourites,” he outlined, describing how the most ambitious stories don’t require inordinate budgets. “I don’t think you would consider those huge movies, but they’re movies that have had such a profound effect on my life, and they look at the human condition in such a compelling way.”
Blockbusters may not be on the horizon, then, but if It’s What’s Inside is any indication, Jardin’s filmmaking future is bright.
