It Lives Inside
Sam is desperate to fit in at school, rejecting her Indian culture and family to be like everyone else. When a mythological demonic spirit latches onto her former best friend, she must come to terms with her heritage in order to defeat it.
- Released: 2023-03-11
- Runtime: 99 minutes
- Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
- Stars: Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, Vik Sahay, Betty Gabriel, Mohana Krishnan, Gage Marsh, Beatrice Kitsos, Saisha Muni, Sangeeta Wylie
- Director: Bishal Dutta
Comments
- OnjiMooteDaMarle - 3 July 2024
Slow & Boring
Apart from being cliche in every aspect, the film having an Indian family in it's core story doesn't give anything to the story. One could have had a black family or a Korean family instead and the story would have still been the same and bad at that. What made it horrible for me was the Indian-ness in the film. The mantras/ chants itself felt very fake but the pisaach's costume was like some creature from most Hollywood films. At one point it even looked like a Godzilla baby. What the director Bishal Dutta doesn't understand is the pisaach in it's true form is like a soul. You can't touch it let alone hit it with a mace or a stick. That's what happens in a Godzilla or an alien movie. Anyway the story is cliche from the beginning till the end. For a moment at the climax I thought this is going the Babadook way and it somewhere did. - ryanpersaud-59415 - 28 January 2024
Under Written, Boring, and A Total Missed Opportunity
Look, I think It Lives Inside is trying to do something admirable. By focusing on a Indian-American teenager, Sam, (Megan Suri) and juxtaposing the supernatural with her own torn identity (a common one many first generation teens face), the bones of a great story are here. However, the It Lives Inside lacks the energy and feels extremely underwritten, never really exploring the themes or the experience to the extent it should.
Instead, it becomes a pretty generic ghost/demon movie with paint-by-numbers scenes, lots of shots of people staring at things with their mouths agape, and a frustratingly slow and plodding pace. The reveal of the Hindu demon that stalks Sam comes via...a Google search or something, and the movie never explores what its purpose is or any of the mythology around it. Quite the waste, honestly.
A lot of this film consists of someone walking around, seeing an invisible demon (yeah, I know), half heartedly attempting to escape from it, and something happening to them. Rinse and repeat. We've seen this before. In Smile it was done and the protagonist's descent into madness was done so much better. We've seen the Babadook give an invisible antagonist real character and screen presence. We've seen It Follows depict the paranoia of being, well, followed. This movie borrows from all of these films, but just does it worse.
The cherry on top is that this movie is rated PG-13 and it feels like it. There's so much annoying squelching when it attacks a person, but they leave the experience, looking like they've been in a fight with a house cat.
Unfortunately, despite the admirable intentions and potentially interesting cultural aspects, It Lives Inside falls very flat.
