The I Inside 2004

Simon Cable wakes up in a hospital in 2002 with no memory of the past two years. Dr. Newman informs him that he briefly died and is suffering from memory loss, leaving Simon to puzzle through what he has forgotten. He believes it is the year 2000 and does not recognize his wife, Anna. A distressed woman named Clair visits him, but when he follows her, the hospital staff insist no one was there. The steady, patient work of Dr. Newman continues as he helps Simon piece together fragments of his past, a past that seems to be split between two different timelines.

As the mystery deepens, Simon discovers that his brother, Peter, died before he met Anna, contradicting his belief that Peter was still alive when he last saw him. An orderly, Morgue Orderly, escorts him for an MRI, where an intruder injects him with an unknown substance. He awakens in 2000, in a hospital where a different doctor, Dr. Truman, tells him he was admitted after a car accident and that he has no wife. In this new timeline, he meets a patient named Travis and recognizes Nurse Clayton, whom he had previously seen in his dream of 2002. He also learns that Clair was originally engaged to Peter, and that he is suspected of involvement in Peter’s death. The 2000 timeline also reveals that Anna, a nurse at the hospital, plays a recording of Peter accusing Simon of killing him and tries to blackmail him into marrying her.

Back in 2002, Simon returns to Dr. Newman and explains what he saw, but Dr. Newman attributes it to hallucinations caused by an anti-anxiety medication. Dr. Truman no longer works at the hospital, but Travis remains on the fifth floor awaiting surgery and remembers Simon from two years ago. When he shifts again to 2000, Simon thinks he spots the same intruder from the MRI room and later stabs him, only to realize the attacker was actually Travis. He runs away and returns to 2002, where Travis is unharmed; however, the stab wounds suddenly appear and kill him.

A new memory surfaces: Simon recalls pushing Peter out of a window during a fight, then trying to dispose of the body by rolling it off a cliff. He was caught in the act and forced to flee. Determined to change the past, he returns to the night in his family home when he confessed his love to Clair, but this time he walks away from her out of loyalty to Peter. Clair chases Peter as he leaves, and Simon still accidentally pushes him out the window during their confrontation. Instead of covering it up, Simon takes Peter to the hospital.

While driving, Simon is tailgated by another car, and Peter briefly regains consciousness, distracting him. The collision that follows sends Simon careening into another car and Clair—returning to speak to him—is killed. EMTs arrive, including a woman who resembles Anna, and Simon, badly injured, hears familiar words from an EMT before blacking out. He finds himself back in his family home where Peter is present, and he hears Dr. Newman tell him he must let go. Yet Simon refuses, desperate for another chance. The final moment returns him to the hospital bed, dying, and then the scene resets to the start of the movie, with Simon waking again in 2002, trapped in a looping devastating memory that he cannot escape.

• This story unfolds with a cool, restrained pace that keeps the two timelines in tension, offering a careful meditation on memory, guilt, and the desperate wish to change what cannot be changed. The performances carry a quiet gravitas, particularly in the exchanges between Dr. Newman and Simon as they navigate the uneasy boundaries between hallucination and reality. The film uses its hospital setting—lifted by clinical sounds, clipped conversations, and sudden flashes of memory—to create a claustrophobic atmosphere where every detail might be a clue or a red herring. The emotional core centers on Clair’s relationship with Peter and the toll of unresolved past actions on those left behind, all while Simon grapples with the possibility that the past, no matter how deeply repressed, might always reach out to define the present.