It Lives Inside Review
Theatrical Movie Review - Horror/Thriller
I attend a lot of movies which means that I see a lot of movie trailers. Enough that even trailers that I like tend to wear on my nerves a bit. But despite Sthe many trailers I have seen, I don’t believe that I ever saw one for this week’s movie. That said, the poster for Bishal Dutta’s full length directorial debut, “It Lives Inside” was creepy enough to pique my interest in it.
Samidha (Megan Suri) is struggling to figure out where she belongs. Her mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa) is a conservative housewife, exclusively speaking Hindi at home and working hard to uphold her family’s Indian heritage, whereas her father Inesh (Vik Sahay) has become more assimilated to their American suburban life. Sam just wants to fit in, and as part of that, she abandoned her childhood friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), another Indian-American young woman who has been acting increasingly erratic, carrying a jar with her everywhere and muttering Hindu prayers under her breath. When Sam accidentally breaks the jar, she unleashes a terrible curse upon them.
This movie felt like it had a lot of missed potential to me. The story itself is fairly boilerplate supernatural horror movie fodder, but rather than the common Christian imagery, it borrows from Indian mythology.
The movie starts out strong, with some chilling imagery. And the setup for Sam feels really interesting. We see her sniff her sweater when she leaves her home to make sure it won’t betray her upbringing, her friend makes her say “Katie is my best friend” in Hindi (which she mistakenly calls Hindu). The discomfort with her Indian culture is clear as well as the reason behind that. But by the second act when the demon is released, it abandons most of what makes it unique to just another teen possession movie.
The performances are hit or miss. I thought that Suri was a great scream queen. Betty Gabriel puts in a lovely performance as the teacher who Sam can confide in. But the emotional weight of the movie falls on Bajwa as the mother, and her performance felt wooden and thin to me, which undercut a lot of the potential power of the third act.
Like the rest of the movie, the production value is also a bit unbalanced. I dug the monster design and felt like some of the inexpensive ways to convey its presence were effective. But the CGI was abysmal and really took me out of the moment when it happened. Horror movies need to stop with the invisible monster ragdolling its victims around. It looks awful literally every time, regardless of the budget.
This is definitely a flawed movie, but it also has moments in it that have me interested to see what Dutta might have in front of him. If he has the opportunity to do more, I hope that he will play it less safe and lean into all of the themes that he presents. Courage is a part of most horror movies, and it needs to be a part of making them as well.
This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on September 24, 2023.
I was a lot higher on this one than you were. I liked the mother's performance, and I thought the way the possession unfolded was a pretty interesting contrast to most possession films that come from a Christian background. I thought particularly the ending (when compared with say, The Exorcist) had special resonance for the children-of-immigrants story.