"It Lives Inside" only breaks new ground culturally

It Lives Inside (2023)

Supernatural horror breaks new ground in terms of cultural representation with “It Lives Inside,” the feature debut from writer-director Bishal Dutta. The film (based on Dutta’s story with Ashish Mehta) is certainly a personal story told from a fresh perspective, but besides a few exceptions, it’s in the standard plotting and scares that make this chiller come across a little less special and a bit more rote. 

Megan Suri plays Samidha, an Indian-American girl who has distanced herself from her cultural background. Sniffing her clothes before she gets to school, she just wants to fit in and would rather go by “Sam,” even at home in the suburbs with her immigrant mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa) and father Inesh (Vik Sahay), who’s looser with the customs. At school, Sam has stopped associating herself with an old friend, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who starts showing up to class looking withdrawn and clutching a glass jar. When Tamira approaches Sam, you better believe that jar falls to the ground, breaking and unleashing the evil spirit that’s living inside. The demon inside, however, is a “Pishach,” a flesh-eating demon in Hindu and Buddhist mythology that must be trapped in another vessel. Once Sam believes the Pishach is real, how can she stop it?

There have been so many recent horror films of the same “Metaphor/Literal Monster” ilk (or it just feels that way) that any upcoming releases really have to bring it. If trauma (or however Jamie Lee Curtis pronounces it) was the real darkness dweller in Rob Savage’s “The Boogeyman,” “It Lives Inside” at least gives that tired chestnut a break. In a cautionary-tale sort of way about never forgetting where you come from, this demon is actually integral to the characters’ religion. Without that specificity, this would just be another movie about a demonic presence. But even so, it still feels like another movie about a demonic presence, as skilled and nicely moody as it can be. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com

Grade: C +

NEON released “It Lives Inside” (99 min.) in theaters on September 22, 2023.