Synopsis:
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.
What We Thought:
It Lives Inside had the potential be something different in horror. It could have used Indian mythology to bring something new to the genre. It does, but it also doesn’t. The mythology is there, but it’s just the latest J-Horror clone with jumpscares and characters I didn’t care about.
If you aren’t familiar with J-Horror (Japanese horror films like Ringu from the early 2000s) maybe you might like this. Unfortunately for me it feels like a hundred other movies with characters making terrible decisions and no one believing anything. Despite being an Indian teenager, the main character feels like every other teenaged character in film history. She wants to fit in. She has a crush on a boy. She doesn’t think her parents will understand and she fights with her mom. Wow, how original. I pretty much didn’t care about her from the get go which is a problem because she’s the film’s protagonist.
The creature in the film does come from Indian culture which is cool because that’s something I’ve never seen before. Unfortunately how the creature behaves feels like The Boogeyman, The Grudge and other supernatural films that I don’t ever find scary. How people find shadows, doors opening and something walking in the background scary I’ll never know.
The lead character makes every mistake in the book. When her former friend who is also Indian goes missing, the lead doesn’t reach out to those who might understand. Her friend had a book with writing in it and instead of turning to the Indian community who already lost someone the year before, she tries to handle it on her own. Instead of going to her parents who told her all these stories as a child, she tells her mom she won’t understand. Wow, how original. In reality her parents and community are the EXACT people she should be turning to because they are the only ones who know the mythology. Instead she turns to her white boy crush and her teacher who is African-American. Because when someone goes missing or is presumed dead a year after another Indian boy had died, let’s get help from those who have no idea what you’re talking about.
Instead of bringing something new to the table, It Lives Inside feels like every other supernatural/spirit based horror movie of the past 20 years. It’s so stereotypical of the genre the audience that I saw it with talked back to the screen and told characters what not to do. Instead of learning something about the Indian culture I got The Boogeyman 2. Yes it’s great we are seeing new cultures on screen that we don’t normally get (especially in genre films), but the characters feel like characters we’ve seen over and over again. It’s cool to see how horror has grown in other cultures, but I wish we got more of that culture in the film. That being said, it’ll probably do well at the box office or at least well enough to get a sequel.
DIRECTED BY
Bishal Dutta
STARRING
Megan Suri
Neeru Bajwa
Mohana Krishnan
Vik Sahay
Gage Marsh
Beatrice Kitsos
The Nerds Templar 