It Lives Inside Review

It Lives Inside is an American horror film influenced by Indian culture and Hinduism. This film sees an Indian-American teen haunted by a demon from the Indian Subcontinent.

Samidha (Megan Suri) aims to be a typical American teen. Everyone calls her Sam, she speaks English, even at home, and acts American as much as possible, to the annoyance of her traditional mother, Poorna (Neeru Bajwa). Sam’s old friend, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan) has become a depressed outsider and asks Sam for help. However, when Sam refuses to help, Tamira disappears, and Sam is then haunted by a malicious spirit.

It Lives Inside was an ambitious film on a thematic level. The film can be appreciated because of its three pillars: cultural clash and identity, mental health, and familial strife.

It Lives Inside’s unique selling point was its use of Indian and Hindi folklore, which blended with a story about mental health. The monster in the film was a Pishach, a flesh-eating demon that feeds on negative energy. It isolates its victim, making them depressed, and distorts their sense of reality. Most audiences wouldn’t know much about Indian folklore, so It Lives Inside was able to stand out and the demon’s ability to isolate its victims made it potentially more frightening. The idea of a cross-cultural supernatural threat that spans borders made It Lives Inside a bit like Umma and His House.

‘Potential’ was the best word to describe It Lives Inside. The film had interesting ideas but It Lives Inside was too similar to other recent horror movies. This was due to the threat being an invisible monster. In films like It Follows, Smile, and Talk to Me a young woman gets haunted by a spirit only they could see. When watching It Lives Inside, I kept thinking of Talk to Me.

Talk to Me and It Lives Inside were horror films that premiered at major film festivals and had a buzz around them. However, Talk to Me took a lot of It Live Inside’s thunder since they tackled similar themes. Talk to Me was much better at handling its mental health themes as a girl struggled with her grief and had issues with her father. Talk to Me had some of the best horror scenes in recent years. The one thing that It Lives Inside did better was showing Sam’s mental decline since she started as a typical teen who posted photos on social media, went to parties, and had a crush on a friend. She went from a girl wearing fashionable clothes to dark hoodies and sweatpants.

In the previously mentioned films, only the main characters could see the malice spirit. In those films the victim saw the spirit as a person, yet in It Lives Inside it was invisible, except for seeing its eyes glow occasionally in the dark. This lacks any sense of dread and this decision seems to be a money-saving exercise. It looked ridiculous when a character was attacked by the invisible monster. I thought of the Family Guy episode “Ocean’s Three and a Half” when a character in a cutaway says, “We’ve got 24 hours before those terrorists set off that new type of bomb that makes an invisible explosion.” Even The Boogeyman gave audiences glimpses of their monster to build up suspense.

There were elements of the screenplay that didn’t seem thought through. This was a film about Sam being brought up by a traditional Indian mother, she had a lack of knowledge about Indian and Hindi culture. If her family was so traditional then surely some of the stories from the homeland would sunk in for Sam. The other annoyance was the role of the police or lack of it. The film was set in a typical North American suburb and considering what happens to some of the young characters surely the police would have been more interested.

It Lives Inside was a frustrating film. There were great ideas with the potential to put an original spin on the horror genre, but its writing and presentation ended up making It Lives Inside bland and pedestrian.