TheRetroCritic

When Pixar announced Inside Out , a film mostly taking place inside a kid's head, it sounded insane but promising in that it's something that hadn't been done before and it had the potential to be the animation studio's most affecting film since Up . The film's big concept is explained to us little by little as we see young Riley's early years develop from a single emotion, Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), to several including Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). When Riley and her parents move to San Francisco, this jumbles up her emotions to the point where Joy and Sadness find themselves out of the loop completely. The film follows the latter two as they desperately try to get back into Riley's head through any means possible. This is arguably the most surreal Pixar adventure since Monsters Inc. , which was also directed by Pete Docter, and the gimmicky concept once again doesn't distract from

Frank Henenlotter, the mad genius behind the Basket Case movies, directs yet another piece of nutty horror/comedy gold. This time, instead of a killer tumour...twin we're introduced to Aylmar: a brain devouring piece of crap with a beautiful singing voice.  As evil brain leech Aylmar slowly takes over Bryan's (anagram for Brayn, geddit?) dependence with his addictive juice, Bryan's world becomes a fertile source of hallucinations and bloody, unmotivated serial killings.  The killings include lots of brain sucking, a deadly blow-job and a kiss of death to name a few. The film is way more polished than, say, the first Basket Case and in terms of randomness this is actually closer to that film's sequel so expect a healthy dose of stop-motion and almost good practical effects. The obvious drug imagery is perhaps hammered in a little to much and some of the film is quite repetitive but on the whole this is an original, very funny and hugely enjoyable  mad ride