Inside Out 2: A Review, Sort Of

/ Jeff Cann

Spoiler alert: This essay reveals (most of the) key plot points in Pixar’s Inside Out 2.
Trigger alert: Discussion of panic attacks.

We showed up at the theater, just the two of us, gray hair in a sea of blondes, brunettes, blacks and reds. We concealed the boxes of candy purchased at Rite Aid in the long-sleeved shirts we carried with us to combat the over-chilled theater air on this ninety-degree summer night. We queued behind families with school age and preteen children excited about this sequel a full nine years after the original wowed children and adults alike.

On Sophie’s suggestion (just twelve years old when the original came out), we chose Inside Out 2 over Ryan Gossling’s The Fall Guy. At first, Susan leaned towards The Fall Guy. On her semester abroad during college, she made it a point to watch French-dubbed Fall Guy episodes, one of the few American shows she could find on broadcast TV. The show holds a special place in her heart. Alas, The Fall Guy was only showing in Hanover, Pennsylvania, thirty minutes away. With Sophie’s recommendation and all, Inside Out 2 got the nod.

Walking from the box office into the theater, looking at our tickets, Susan laughed out loud “Ha, they gave us senior discounts.” This has been happening to me for a couple of years. I’m pretty sure this movie was Susan’s first.

Like many (most?) adults, I have some experience with mental health concerns. I almost wrote ‘mental illness’ but that sounds maybe a bit too dramatic. Mine are (have been) mostly disruptive rather than disabling, and I think that’s a key distinction to make—a few depressive episodes in my rearview mirror, intermittent moderate anxiety, and extended bouts of OCD as a child and an adult. With my OCD seemingly in remission right now, my mental health issues are run-of-the-mill at worst. So why did I find Inside Out 2 so disturbing?

Because it’s an animated children’s movie, I assume few reading this know much about this movie franchise. Here come the spoilers. Much of the action takes place at a control panel in a girl’s brain. The console is operated by ‘people’ who serve as incarnate representatives of human emotions. In the original movie and at the start of the sequel, Riley’s thoughts are controlled primarily by a woman named Joy, with periodic input from Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust.

A short way into the movie, thirteen-year-old Riley’s puberty-alarm goes off, and a new set of emotions arrive: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment and Teenage-Ennui (for comic relief). Anxiety is the ringleader of the new group of emotions, and she quickly banishes the original emotions, along with Riley’s character—a beautiful, glowing orb that lights up headquarters and is a constant source of pride for Joy—to the far reaches of Riley’s brain, a surprisingly cavernous area with a good deal of industrial activity. This is also the place where Joy has stashed thirteen-years of Riley’s unpleasant memories. Riley, so far, has lived with, and her character was formed with, only happy thoughts.

As the (person) Anxiety drives Riley’s new thoughts and actions, Anxiety takes the resulting memories and uses them to rebuild Riley’s character, an ugly, scrawny, broken-looking thing. Over the course of a few days at sleep-away hockey camp, Riley becomes fueled by the negative thoughts and emotions that anxiety (Anxiety) formed. She ditches her old friends, lies to fit in, breaks all the rules, and turns her back on the concept of teamwork.

The movie climaxes with Riley’s panic attack in the middle of a hockey game. Externally, Riley shows the classic symptoms—shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and displaying an overall air of doom. Inside Riley’s brain, a tornado has engulfed her emotion console. At the center of the tornado, Anxiety is paralyzed, terrified, hand gripping the control stick, trapped in the storm of her own creation.

For humanity, anxiety is an important emotion. A modest amount ensures that we keep motivated, and we give our actions careful attention. An overdose of anxiety has the opposite effect. It causes us to react out of negative emotions or in extreme cases, we lose the ability to react at all. A panic attack is the extreme manifestation of an overdose of anxiety.

My own, single panic attack occurred several months after a near fatal bicycle accident. As I lay in bed talking with Susan about god-knows-what (this was thirty years ago) my anxiety quickly escalated. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe, and I broke out in head-to-toe sweat. I shot up in bed, my head swinging side to side like a trapped animal, but there was nothing to escape from. The demon was inside me, and I couldn’t shake it loose. Days later I started therapy, and fortunately, I headed off any follow-up panic attacks.

The Inside Out 2 scene was too much. Too much for me, and I wondered if it was too much for the children surrounding me. When the movie ended a few minutes later, I told Susan I thought that scene was a little too realistic for me. She thought so too and wondered aloud how many people have been adversely triggered by watching that. I purposely haven’t looked online to see others’ opinions. I wanted to write this from my own perspective. Perhaps few children have such acute experience with anxiety to react like this. But for me, this the build-up of negative emotions and the nightmarish panic attack snapped me out of enjoying a cute movie and reminded me of one of the worst moments in my life.

Have you seen Inside Out 2? Do you have panic attacks? I’m curious to hear what other people think about this topic.

Edited: Online, I found only positive reviews of this scene by journalists, bloggers and psychologists. The general consensus is this problem is widespread enough that it needs to be addressed in mainstream entertainment. One woman wrote: There’s something meaningful about seeing a child onscreen experience poor mental health, and it will almost certainly allow the approximately 7% of children who experience issues with anxiety to feel seen. I only wish something like this had existed when I was a child.

Not sure. It didn’t work that way for me. Your thoughts?

Photo by Simran Sood on Unsplash

26 thoughts on “Inside Out 2: A Review, Sort Of”

      • Just read the edit and what immediately came to mind was how the adults around me when I was younger would tell me things like you’re too young to be depressed or anxious… you have your whole life ahead of you. Which made the anxiety worse. As an adult, I had those same people around me trying to figure out why I wouldn’t talk about what was going on with me after having been hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia. You’d never guess what show I watched that made me feel seen…. Marvel’s Moon Knight. While it really echoes DID it speaks to schizophrenia as well.

        If kids see something that validates their feelings or experiences and it opens them up to want to talk about it .. I think that’s cool. I think Disney took a calculated risk with introducing something like that to their younger audience for consumption. I have yet to see it soooo… we’ll see if I still feel the same way later. Lol this might be one of those hard movie moments for me. I cried when Bambi’s mom got shot, I cried when Mufasa died.
        I even cried when that lil lightning bug died in Princess and the Frog. So yeah… we’ll see.

        This is all very interesting. Can’t wait to see how they dealt with how she perceives herself through it all.

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        • I do suppose that a parent seeing that scene with their anxious child might see their child in the behavior and may get them some professional help. My parents either ignored or misinterpreted my OCD and Tourette Syndrome as a child. There wasn’t much in the way of treatment back then, but acknowledgement would have helped me know I wasn’t nuts.

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    • Right, still not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Being triggered, got me thinking deeply about the topic and spending some time on self-analysis. IT might be worth pulling people out of their comfort zone. Not sure how this translates to children though.

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  4. Interesting story line that seems to be an out-of-control variation on a clinical hypnosis ‘script’ called The control room of the mind. I doubt if I’ll be seeing the film, partly because of the reasons you outline, and your spoiler-review will do me.

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  5. Excellent story line and captivated my attention the entire post. Very well thought out and well written with good energy! I enjoyed it❣️ PLEASE comment on my posts, follow and like my blog as I’ve followed yours! Blessings;-)

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  6. I haven’t heard of this movie, actually I haven’t even been to the theater is years. I am glad you wrote this post though because with my history of anxiety and panic attacks it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to watch it, especially since the past couple of weeks my panic attacks have become more frequent. Definitely do not need any type of trigger. However, maybe in the future when I am feeling “back on track” and I can watch this movie from home, I might give it look. Thank you Jeff 😊

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    • Based on my 9 year old memory, I highly recommend the first one. It was a really engaging story line and altogether fresh. Enough so that we went to see the kids-movie sequel without any kids.

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    • Well, Sydney is a beautiful city, and Ryan Gossling is quite likeable these days. Since the gettysburg theater has chosen not to show it, I doubt we’ll ever watch it. But spending the last 10+ years with teenage kids, our tolerance for terrible movies is quite high.

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  8. I haven’t seen the movie. But I am familiar with anxiety and panic. I know how debilitating anxiety can be. How it wrecks my ability to be effective and to be alive in the moment. I used to wake up almost every morning with a panic attack. Now, thankfully, my anxiety has decreased dramatically and my panic attacks are few. But just thinking back to the time when my life was ruled by anxiety and panic makes me shudder. So I understand how a scene like that could trigger a strong response.

    This post is beautifully written. I love how you get details about yourself and Susan into the narrative so that they provide context without interrupting the story or appearing artificial. You’re a master at doing that.

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    • This post took an absurd amount of time to write. I have a newfound respect for movie reviewers. What to put in, what to leave out. Retaining nuances during a fast paced movie, etc. Putting it together in a way that doesn’t seem like an eight-year-old rehashing a plot.

      Anxiety absolutely sucks. When I’m struggling, usually in the evening, I just go to bed. It’s my only remedy. I usually feel much better in the morning (which seems to be my best time of the day). Do you find that your anxiety is lower now that you’ve retired? Based on my memory, I think your office hours only just ended, but I think I’d get a huge boost just saying the words ‘I retire.’ Of course then I’d start to obsess over what I’m going to do with my extra time.

      I’m not sure I could have dealt with more anxiety attacks of the magnitude I experienced. It was absolutely horrible.

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      • My official retirement date is July 1. I’ll be cleaning out my office and bringing things home this week. But my anxiety has been lowered since my final semester as full-time faculty ended, and I expect it will be even lower when it sinks in this fall that I don’t have to teach classes anymore.

        My anxiety is unpredictable. It can hit seemingly out of nowhere. Perhaps a psychoanalyst could point to the reason that I have a panic attack, but often I can’t.

        But while I used to wake up with a panic attack almost every morning, now I wake up looking forward to getting back to whatever writing project I’m working on. And that’s a great feeling.

        If your experience with retirement is anything like mine (so far), you won’t have any trouble filling the extra time.

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        • That’s great that retirement (or the promise of retirement) is relaxing you so much. Without a lottery win, mine is a ways away. Are you still thinking about forming a writers consortium? If yes, have you started putting any structure to that idea? This past week, I’ve been feeling the itch to write more. Hope it lasts.

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        • I am volunteering in an Eastern Michigan University community writing initiative. I have been serving as a writing consultant, providing people with feedback and advice on their writing projects. And they have asked me to conduct a workshop on memoir writing in September. So I’m hoping to build some relationships with other area writers through this initiative.

          I hope your writing itch lasts, too! I always love reading your work.

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  9. I read somewhere that this movie is doing great at the Box Office. I wonder if people are going to see it because of the subject matter? I have noticed that many people, including children, are having a difficult time with emotions.

    I don’t know if we’re just seeing it more, if it’s more prevalent, or if it’s another media fueled doomsday thing.

    I hate that watching a movie could be unexpectedly triggering for anyone. Sometimes those events can be a catalyst though. Is the pain and fear worth it if it brings understanding and coping skills? I’m assuming there was a “Happy Ending” as usual.

    I didn’t see the first one, and probably won’t see this one. Life is too busy still. I will mention it to Younger though. They frequently go to movies, and a warning might help them be prepared. It might also help their partner understand what happens to them and how debilitating it actually is.

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  11. I starting getting panic attacks when I was 65. In airports. Not on planes. Just airports. I had no idea what was happening to me. It would have been extremely helpful to have seen a movie like this before panic attacks appeared in my life. I solved the problem. I stopped going to airports.

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    • My daughter has had a couple of mild panic attacks in airports. I get it. Flying stresses the hell out of me. When I had that major panic attack, I had know idea what was happening. It felt like I might die. They are just awful. I’m not sure seeing that movie scene would have been enough to put two and two together. Not being able to breathe is really scary.

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