IT LIVES INSIDE - Mark Reviews Movies

It Lives Inside, NEON

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 21, 2023

It's unfortunate how quickly and definitively It Lives Inside, a horror movie with a culturally specific hook, collapses into the routine, the generic, and the ridiculous. Writer/director Bishal Dutta's feature debut ends up being more concerned with cheap jump scares and fake-outs than with digging into what might have made this story—of a teenage girl coming to terms with her heritage when it comes at her with a vengeance—unique.

The girl is Sam (Megan Suri), short for Samidha, and she's the daughter of immigrants from India. At home, Sam is in near-constant conflict with her mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa), a woman with traditional values and who wants her family to maintain the customs of her homeland. Meanwhile, Sam just wants to fit in as best as she can in American suburbia, where a good number of her classmates already treat her a bit different because of her ethnic background.

One girl, for example, insists that Sam let herself be recorded saying something in "Hindu," and one can see Sam's hesitation in correcting the girl that it's actually Hindi. Should she let it slide, just allowing the ignorant mistake to hang there, or should Sam correct her, potentially risking how the sort-of friend might react?

It's a brief but notable scene that gives us a sense of Sam's everyday existence of being slighted, seen as some sort of "other," and treated as if her heritage is something exotic to be exploited. While the screenplay actually delves into this idea, Suri's performance is smart in the way she shows us Sam's constant juggling of who she is, how people perceive her, and how she wants to be seen.

Mostly, though, the movie is a horror story, revolving around a mysterious demon that, apparently, has traveled from India to this small town, specifically to haunt, torment, and potentially kill anyone who encounters it. Sam's former best friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who now lives an isolated life and just sort of wanders around dressed in black and sporting a tired look on her face, appears to be its current target.

Tamira also carries around a glass jar everywhere she goes, insisting that there's something living inside the container—keeping her awake, needing raw meat to eat, trying to escape. Sam doesn't believe her, because the teen has started to reject anything about her cultural background to better fit in with the crowd, and is annoyed that this "weird" girl keep bothering her. She eventually knocks the jar to ground, and sure enough, there was something in there. Now, it's haunting Sam, just when Russ (Gage Marsh), her crush, starts talking to and wanting to hang out with her.

Everything and anything that might have made this setup different or, at least, a little distinct are quickly dismissed at this point. The pattern of the story becomes exactly what we might expect. Sam begins to have nightmares—or hallucinations or maybe just some supernatural occurrences happening in front of her—of glowing eyes in her closet, of being trapped in some enclosed space that's covered with a translucent cloth, and of invisible claws digging into her flesh.

Eventually, this invisible demon starts interacting with and within the real world, stalking Sam, her family, her pals, and her compassionate teacher Joyce (Betty Gabriel). The monster being invisible is somewhat clever in theory, although it also undercuts much of the potential suspense here. Its appearances are treated as sudden surprises, such as when it attacks someone on and with a swing out of the blue. In fairness, the creature's unseen nature turns out to be a better choice than the physical monster we finally do get, since it's just someone in a rubber suit that's shot mostly in darkness, which doesn't quite hide how cheap-looking it and its puppet, jagged-tooth face are.

The whole process becomes repetitive, only to be broken up by a howl-worthy third act that has Sam returning to her cultural roots, bonding with her mother, and preparing a feast to lure the demon. That sequence, delicately paced and shown in slow-motion, is intercut with a sequence of someone close to Sam being hunted and attacked by the monster. The juxtaposition of the rhythm, tone, and urgency—or decided lack thereof—of those two scenes is so extreme that it's unintentionally hilarious.

It Lives Inside clearly wants to be about deeper ideas of culture, assimilation, and identity. All the movie ultimately does, though, is abandon such notions for an easy, superficial, and inconsistent attempt at a scare show.

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