Game night devolves into body-switching nightmare in trippy It's What's Inside trailer

No body is ready for It's What's Inside.

In the trippy trailer for the body-swapping thriller, which Entertainment Weekly is debuting exclusively above, a group of friends is gathered for a pre-wedding party when one of them — an enigmatic man named Forbes (David Thompson) — asks if a game night is still an option for the evening.

The group then gathers around Forbes, who has a mysterious suitcase. "Before I open this suitcase, this is just some needs-to-stay-in-this-room type of s---," he warns the room, before telling them they need to put away their phones. Everyone sticks electrodes to their temples, and things get really weird from there. Cue eerie body-switching montages and meltdowns shot with neon lights.

The film marks the directorial debut of Greg Jardin, who also wrote the screenplay. In addition to Thompson, Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Devon Terrell, Gavin Leatherwood, Reina Hardesty, and Nina Bloomgarden star. William Rosenfeld, Kate Andrews, Jason Baum, and Raúl Domingo are all producers, and Ulf Ek, Robert Kapp, and actor Colman Domingo serve as executive producers.

Below, Jardin answers some of EW's questions about the film via email, including what Domingo brought to the film, which board game provided inspiration for the story, and how he and the actors kept track of all the body-changing shenanigans.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What did Colman Domingo bring to the table in his role as executive producer? How closely did you work together?

GREG JARDIN: Colman was very instrumental in the film becoming a reality; without him, I’d probably still be shopping it around. Anyone will tell you this, but he’s a really magnificent guy who exudes positive energy, and he was there to support me every step of the way, regardless of how busy he was. After he had initially read the script, he developed it with me, giving me a few rounds of very helpful, mostly character-centric notes. And then he passed the script along to key parties — including SUCH, who ended up giving us our financing; Mary Vernieu, who ended up casting our movie; and Alycia, who ended up being stellar as our Nikki. He watched every cut of the film, gave notes, gave support, gave pep talks, and I’m super honored to have him as a partner on this project.

Where did the idea for the story come from, and how long have you been developing the concept?

After being unable to get other larger-scoped films going, I had given myself a mandate of writing a script that could be executed for as little money as possible. That is, a story that took place in one location, in one night, with an ensemble of eight actors. I had just played the party game Werewolf for the first time at a friend’s party, and it was super intense, so I knew that if executed properly, the stakes of a party game could feel big, probably bigger than they actually were. Paired with that, I’d had the idea that someone in the group should bring a sci-fi-tinged suitcase to the party, and basically, over the course of 2016, I turned all of those ideas into a script.

What was the rehearsal process like? How did the actors who switch bodies prepare and learn each other's mannerisms and body language?

We were very fortunate to be able to have a week of rehearsal at the hero house with all of the actors. Frankly, the movie would not have come out the way it did had we not had that luxury. During this time, I tried to give each actor as much agency as possible regarding their "core" characters, working with them to come up with all of their performance-centric traits so they could, in turn, work with their castmates in developing everyone. It was a lot of fun. We would have times where we’d just focus on single characters, but with all of the actors present, and we’d rehearse certain scenes in front of the whole cast so everyone could get a sense of what everyone else was doing.

You mentioned in an interview for Tudum that you used a Photoshop diagram to help keep track of who's who when you were writing the script. Can you explain a little more about how that worked?

In my initial outline phase, it was getting tricky to keep track of all of the swaps, as you might imagine, so I essentially made "temp" polaroids of all of the characters, just using polaroid portraits I had found online. This way I basically had a "face" put to every name, and I created a single image of all eight polaroids next to one another. And then, for each round of body swapping, I would take that image and essentially superimpose whatever character was in whoever’s body for that round, so I basically had a visual cheat sheet for each round.

What are some of the film's themes and what do you hope audiences take away from them?

The central theme that I kept coming back to really revolves around artificial intimacy, that is, how we’ve all become reliant on screens for not only our self-worth, but for our general sense of how we connect with one another on a romantic level. So, in this case, we focus on a relationship in crisis, where both members of the relationship have consumed such a high amount of online artifice, that they each have issues connecting with one another because their collective values have been so warped.

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It's What's Inside hits Netflix Oct. 4.