It looks at first like a run-of-the-mill revenge flick, but twisty plot points keep this genre film intriguing, if not always credible.
The Madness Inside Me stars Merrin Dungey as a forensic psychiatrist who works with prison inmates seeking parole. One night while she and her husband are sleeping, a home invader awakens them – a struggle ensues and her husband is killed. Can she identify the killer? She only saw his eyes.
While grieving her loss and moving out of that house and into a New York loft that you only see in the movies, she is also helping the police with the investigation. Battling insomnia, she often finds herself sort of mildly stalking strangers on her nighttime walks, taking their photos surreptitiously. She’s busy!
I will refrain from revealing the various twists, except to generically say that, rather than helping the police arrest the person whom she has come to know as the killer, she decides to reverse the cat and mouse game and become the predator stalking the prey…
Except…maybe pure revenge isn’t what she has in mind? Maybe she and the killer (Devon Graye) will have some sort of sexual undercurrent that will manifest itself in ways we hadn’t thought about? And maybe she will metamorphose into a cigarette smoking bad girl who seems 180 degrees apart from the good doctor she presents at the beginning of the story?
The trailer below reveals a bit more, if you’d like to take a peek. The dynamic that develops between the two main characters isn’t always believable, it just seems too fantastical/coincidental/convenient to the plot/etc. – but I enjoyed the turns and unpredicted developments in the final act.
Dungey carries the film admirably and Graye works as a mildly Cillian Murphy-ish creep.
The Madness Inside Me | 2 ½ out of 4 Stars | Now Available On Demand – Also Click Here for iTunes Link
