Willem Dafoe’s upcoming thriller Inside gets its first poster. The four-time Oscar-nominated actor experienced a second surge in popularity when he returned to his career-defining role as the villain Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in the blockbuster hit Spider-Man: No Way Home. From there, Dafoe followed that up with supporting roles in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley and Robert Eggers’ The Northman. Now, the Green Goblin actor has a ton of intriguing projects in the works from distinct directors like Wes Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Another one of those intriguing projects is Inside, an upcoming horror-thriller film that stars Willem Dafoe in the lead role. Now, the first official poster for Inside has been unveiled via Letterboxd on Twitter.
The eerie poster shows Dafoe’s character in a ragged bathrobe, standing amidst a shallow pool of water in a New York penthouse, complemented by the perfectly appropriate tagline, “A solitary exhibition.”
Everything We Know About Inside
Despite sharing a title and a similar isolated premise, Dafoe’s upcoming film bears no relation to Bo Burnham’s contained comedy special Inside, which was released on Netflix in 2021 to universal acclaim. The upcoming psychological horror film stars Dafoe as a high-end art thief who, after a huge heist goes horribly wrong, becomes trapped inside a New York penthouse with nothing but priceless pieces of art surrounding him. The story follows Dafoe’s character, named Nemo, as he goes to increasingly creative lengths to survive.
As the lead star, Dafoe is the only confirmed member of the Inside cast, and considering its contained premise, he could be the only actor who actually appears on-screen. Instead, there are numerous famous artworks confirmed to appear in the film which will, in turn, make up the de facto supporting cast around Dafoe. This includes numerous pieces by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, including a 1910 self-portrait, and other works of art by Lynn Chadwick, Maxwell Alexandre, Maurizio Cattelan, and David Horvitz.
Inside is directed by Vasilis Katsoupis in his feature directorial debut. By setting Inside mostly in a New York Penthouse, Katsoupis continues a prominent trend that started during the COVID-19 pandemic as directors conceived and shot smaller-scale films with limited casts and locations. For instance, Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale and Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi are both set mostly in one apartment. Inside continues this trend, though it remains to be seen if the contained horror film can garner similar acclaim when it releases in theaters on March 10.
