Many of the most resonant and memorable horror films are allegorical in nature. From Rosemary's Baby to Hereditary, they claw at our fears, traumas and desires to reveal powerful truths about the human experience, despite how inhumane they can be. Bishal Dutta's It Lives Inside is another entry into that canon, using the genre framework to interrogate the perils of assimilation, especially the ones that dot the adolescence of Indian-Americans. But unlike the Dharmic abomination at the centre of it, Dutta's debut feature can't break out of the bottle. The film heavily relies on horror tropes and beats to carve its narrative, leaving It Lives Inside too bare-boned to fully realize its thematic ambitions.
Wasting no time in establishing its themes, the movie opens with Samidha (Never Have I Ever's Megan Suri) — who'd like to be called Sam — shaving her forearms and conforming to the Western ideals of beauty while she snaps an Insta pic. Her conservative mother, Poorna (Neeru Bajwa, making her American debut), speaks to her in Hindi, but Sam only replies with crisp, unaccented English. Her mother is so traditional that she doesn't even let her whistle in the house for fear of a Rakshas (a demonic spirit) listening. Sam couldn't care less about her cultural background, even refusing to help her mom cook prasad for the forthcoming pooja. Sam wants nothing more than to fit into her predominantly white neighbourhood, and considers her heritage the greatest barrier in doing that.
In terms of characterization that's sadly it. Sam never becomes anything more than a thematic vessel, one whose cultural turmoil becomes her entire personality. It's ironic that Dutta's script, which is fascinated by the challenges of fostering an identity, never bothers to give its protagonist one. Nonetheless, Sam appears to be fitting in well: acing her classes, striking a romance with the cutest boy in her class (Gage Marsh channeling a Disney Channel love interest), and avoiding the other Indian girl, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who's been acting stranger than ever.
Tamira walks around with an inky glass jar that contains the Pishacha, a demon that feeds off the negative energy of its prey. In a tussle, Sam knocks the jar out of her hand and shatters it, unleashing the eldritch spirit on the campus and the community at large. Sam must find a way to trap the beast in another vessel while getting help from her favourite teacher (Betty Gabriel).
Although the social and cultural bent Dutta applies to the typical horror structure is admirable, especially when it touches on the exotification of Sam's Indianness, Dutta's over-reliance on jump scares and musical stings only serve to elicit eye rolls instead of shrieks, with a gaggle of dream sequences robbing the film of both impact and momentum. A huge stretch of the film's 100-minute runtime is dedicated to having the translucent Pishacha stalk its wafer-thin characters until they escape or the screen cuts to black, cementing an experience that gets old far before its third act.
The religious lore at the heart of the film is fascinating, particularly when it features a contorting, Slender Man-esque creature yelling, "Sharam! Sharam!" ("Shame! Shame!") while charging at Sam. But even the few moments that simmer with originality quickly devolve into standard horror fare that fails to weaponize the abundance of metaphors and allegories in a cathartic fashion. It Lives Inside hopes to get by on the laurels of its unique perspective, but can't hide that its director struggles to inject fresh scares at each turn.
What Dutta does excel at is restraint, refusing to give the audience a good glimpse at the monster — until the climax undoes all of it. The Pishacha's design has more in common with a '50s creature feature than any piece of Dharmic lore, and Dutta's attempts to cultivate an eerie atmosphere with a brownish-red palette and a whispering, slinking score result in diminishing returns as it takes on a more grating timbre as the film trudges on.
Dutta's choice to have significant parts of the movie unfold in Hindi pays off, lending weight and authenticity to the film's emotional core, even though its development is often stifled by the trope-y structure. Bajwa's performance does a lot of the heavy lifting, lending real gravitas and subtlety to her character's disillusionment with life abroad. In a career full of Punjabi comedies, she shows a real knack for drama.
Though It Lives Inside offers interesting ideas about reconciling one's identity with their cultural heritage, its strict, ruthlessly ordinary adherence to the horror formula fails to do any of them justice. Dutta's vision is so myopic in its technical and thematic design that it simply isn't prepared to meaningfully discuss and examine the internal crises that come with assimilation. At best, its cultural perspective will help It Lives Inside stand out from the pack of other middling efforts in the genre.
(Elevation Pictures)Wasting no time in establishing its themes, the movie opens with Samidha (Never Have I Ever's Megan Suri) — who'd like to be called Sam — shaving her forearms and conforming to the Western ideals of beauty while she snaps an Insta pic. Her conservative mother, Poorna (Neeru Bajwa, making her American debut), speaks to her in Hindi, but Sam only replies with crisp, unaccented English. Her mother is so traditional that she doesn't even let her whistle in the house for fear of a Rakshas (a demonic spirit) listening. Sam couldn't care less about her cultural background, even refusing to help her mom cook prasad for the forthcoming pooja. Sam wants nothing more than to fit into her predominantly white neighbourhood, and considers her heritage the greatest barrier in doing that.
In terms of characterization that's sadly it. Sam never becomes anything more than a thematic vessel, one whose cultural turmoil becomes her entire personality. It's ironic that Dutta's script, which is fascinated by the challenges of fostering an identity, never bothers to give its protagonist one. Nonetheless, Sam appears to be fitting in well: acing her classes, striking a romance with the cutest boy in her class (Gage Marsh channeling a Disney Channel love interest), and avoiding the other Indian girl, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who's been acting stranger than ever.
Tamira walks around with an inky glass jar that contains the Pishacha, a demon that feeds off the negative energy of its prey. In a tussle, Sam knocks the jar out of her hand and shatters it, unleashing the eldritch spirit on the campus and the community at large. Sam must find a way to trap the beast in another vessel while getting help from her favourite teacher (Betty Gabriel).
Although the social and cultural bent Dutta applies to the typical horror structure is admirable, especially when it touches on the exotification of Sam's Indianness, Dutta's over-reliance on jump scares and musical stings only serve to elicit eye rolls instead of shrieks, with a gaggle of dream sequences robbing the film of both impact and momentum. A huge stretch of the film's 100-minute runtime is dedicated to having the translucent Pishacha stalk its wafer-thin characters until they escape or the screen cuts to black, cementing an experience that gets old far before its third act.
The religious lore at the heart of the film is fascinating, particularly when it features a contorting, Slender Man-esque creature yelling, "Sharam! Sharam!" ("Shame! Shame!") while charging at Sam. But even the few moments that simmer with originality quickly devolve into standard horror fare that fails to weaponize the abundance of metaphors and allegories in a cathartic fashion. It Lives Inside hopes to get by on the laurels of its unique perspective, but can't hide that its director struggles to inject fresh scares at each turn.
What Dutta does excel at is restraint, refusing to give the audience a good glimpse at the monster — until the climax undoes all of it. The Pishacha's design has more in common with a '50s creature feature than any piece of Dharmic lore, and Dutta's attempts to cultivate an eerie atmosphere with a brownish-red palette and a whispering, slinking score result in diminishing returns as it takes on a more grating timbre as the film trudges on.
Dutta's choice to have significant parts of the movie unfold in Hindi pays off, lending weight and authenticity to the film's emotional core, even though its development is often stifled by the trope-y structure. Bajwa's performance does a lot of the heavy lifting, lending real gravitas and subtlety to her character's disillusionment with life abroad. In a career full of Punjabi comedies, she shows a real knack for drama.
Though It Lives Inside offers interesting ideas about reconciling one's identity with their cultural heritage, its strict, ruthlessly ordinary adherence to the horror formula fails to do any of them justice. Dutta's vision is so myopic in its technical and thematic design that it simply isn't prepared to meaningfully discuss and examine the internal crises that come with assimilation. At best, its cultural perspective will help It Lives Inside stand out from the pack of other middling efforts in the genre.