It Lives Inside, 2023.
Directed by Bishal Dutta.
Starring Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, Mohana Krishnan, Vik Sahay, Gage Marsh, Beatrice Kitsos, Siddhartha Minhas, Sangeeta Wylie, and Betty Gabriel.
SYNOPSIS:
An Indian-American teenager struggling with her cultural identity has a falling out with her former best friend and, in the process, unwittingly releases a demonic entity that grows stronger by feeding on her loneliness.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, It Lives Inside wouldn’t exist.
Co-writer/director Bishal Dutta and screenwriter Ashish Mehta certainly deserve credit for trying to take conventional horror storytelling and twisting it into the fabric of Indian heritage and culture with It Lives Inside. At some point, though, the familiarity needs to feel refreshing through that unique angle, which it never does here.
This film feels like a rough draft of one with the potential to be great but without the confidence to lean into its cultural hook. Instead, it is filled with as many lazy jump scares and weightless false danger nightmare sequences as modern mainstream American horror films. Even worse is a PG-13 rating, meaning that even the clever concepts for kills (such as strangulation by swingset chains) are held back.
The lack of blood and guts is disappointing but nowhere near crippling. It Lives Inside introduces two estranged Indian-American high school girls who were once childhood friends. Samidha (Megan Suri) has lost touch with her Indian culture and Hindu upbringing, choosing to speak English over Hindi around her disapproving mother (Neeru Bajwa), disinterested in helping prepare for one of their regular pujas (a worship gathering), and fibs to, mostly white, students and a teacher (Betty Gabriel) about once being closely connected to Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), the other Indian girl at school who has transitioned into an awkward, nervous wreck following a suicide tragedy involving another Indian family within the area.
By her admission, Sam (which she prefers to be called, fitting in with her Westernization) broke away from Tamira not only because she got unbearably weird but also due to an itch to become more popular. Sacrificing one’s heritage and culture to assimilate with white peers for clout is a horrible choice to make (although there is one boy genuinely interested in her and her background), but It Lives Inside also points out that once one member of a community makes a mistake or gets odd, the entire group becomes fodder for ridicule by association, hence furthering Sam’s decision to distance from her former best friend. Bafflingly, the filmmakers wind up doing nothing with these poignant observations, where the real horror comes from and is far more terrifying than a generic reptilian-looking demon.
In an event coming across like a metaphor for the full severing of this friendship, Tamira desperately pleads with Sam to believe her that there is a demon locked away in a glass jar she carries everywhere with her and that she is running out of ways to contain it, leading to the latter snapping, shoving her away, with the jar falling to the ground and shattering. The demon is free, eventually snatching and locking up Tamira. And so begins the tedious supernatural stalking where very few characters feel in danger. Admittedly, there is the occasional creepy visual such as the demon’s yellow eyes lighting up the darkness in a closet or a sudden spooky reflection, but the proceedings quickly become a clichéd grind with no interest in further exploring these characters or their culture.
That’s also a shame since the performances are believable, especially Megan Suri, a teenager torn on how to handle who she wants to be in this world, refusing to approach her mother for help despite the hauntings being grounded in their religion. Naturally, whether the characters are well-intentioned or not, it’s obvious that her mother is the only one she can turn to if she is going to locate and save Tamira and defeat the demon. It’s also frustrating that, for a demonic entity from another religion, its motives and tactics (such as tenderizing a human soul through terror and negativity) are as familiar as they come.
It’s great that Bishal Dutta was able to get It Lives Inside made and distributed by a noteworthy studio in Neon (there are intriguing things to learn here, and Hinduism is a solid starting point for a horror movie), but taking everything infuriating about modern day horror and transferring it to a different culture and religion doesn’t mean something is refreshing; it’s still bad. More needs to be done than telling the same generic story within a different cultural background.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
Originally published October 9, 2023. Updated October 10, 2023.
