It Lives Inside Review | A Memorably Creepy Thrill

It Lives Inside, the Midnight Audience Award winner from SXSW, expands to wide release September 22, hoping to stake a claim among the flurry of horror films released in fall. Director Bishal Dutta’s freshman outing delves deep into Hindu mythology in a thriller that finds an Indian American teen girl fending off an evil force while also having to reconnect to her cultural roots in India in the process.

That’s enough to send anybody to therapy. Whether protagonist Samidha / Sam (Megan Suri of Missing and Poker Face) survives is sure fun if not bone-chilling to watch. It Lives Inside stands out, mostly because it features diverse characters and a culture that general audiences don’t often experience. To that end, It Lives Inside is worth seeing for it’s refreshingly unique pace and tone, and the way it serves up an evil force that’s downright creepy. Does it suffer from standard horror tropes? Sure. Some. But there’s plenty of fun to have here. Dive in.

New Kind of Horror

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It Lives Inside comes from the producers of Get Out, Sean McKittrick and Raymond Mansfield. There’s a nice trifecta at work here, too, in Bishal Dutta (Triads), writer Ashish Mehta (of the TV series Hush Hush), and Megan Suri. (Dutta is also the cowriter.) But it’s Suri, in fact, who delivers a commanding performance, making It Lives Inside downright captivating at times.

The straightforward story wastes no time getting things rolling. Twenty minutes into the picture, Dutta has the audiences on a unique horror ride filled with suspense and intrigue. Desperate to fit into school, Sam has rejected her Indian culture and family, opting to be like everyone else instead. Oh, Sam! You can sniff out that major life lesson Dutta employs here from the get-go, and you may even roll your eyes a bit knowing that Sam will have to come around. Indeed, she must. And it won’t be easy.

After confronting a former friend one day, the incident unleashes a mythological demonic spirit that had latched onto Sam’s former bestie, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), but now wants to cozy up to her. What is this evil presence? Where did it come from? What’s the game plan? As it mysteriously dips into Sam’s psyche, it’s possessive as all get out.

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There are some great shocks when this entity attempts to thwart anybody attempting to protect Sam from it, especially Joyce (Betty Gabriel from Get Out and The Purge: Election Year), Sam’s teacher, who finds herself battling the strange being. Others filter into the mix, too, and there’s a bit of horror trope B character disposal going on there. There’s also the bizarre disappearance of Sam’s former bestie, whom Sam believes to still be alive. But where? Cue: chilling terror.

Horror Attached To Mysticism

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Overall, the filmmakers do an exceptional job giving the audience the heebie-jeebies. It Lives Inside is wonderfully creepy fun. By the time Sam and her mother (Neeru Bajwa) understand what is occurring, and that it’s linked to Indian mythology, Sam’s mother warns to, “never sleep with a bad feeling in your hearts, because there’s a dark thing that feeds on those feelings.”

No kidding. Sam’s occasional “sightings” of the mysterious thing is bone-chilling as it begins its slow tortuous intentions, first attacking Sam’s sanity, then isolating her from those who love her. “It doesn’t kill you right away,” Sam’s mother professes. “It terrorizes you slowly. When it’s ready, it takes your soul.”

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What is intriguing here, and something that makes It Lives Inside stand out among other horror films generating big scares, is how well the filmmakers delve into Hindu mysticism. The only way out alive for Sam is to somehow embrace the culture she left behind. Crash course in one’s heritage, let’s say, but it’s effective and gives Sam something to reconnect with within herself and a mission to stay alive. If not for herself, then her family, and Tamira, whom she believes still can be saved.

Bishal Dutta and his special effects team keep things relatively streamlined and sparse in terms of showing the entity tormenting Sam. But when they do, it’s WTF creepy. Swift cuts, shifts in lighting, generous use of blood-red coloring and imagery, and other special effects are delivered with precision, and doled out without being too jarring. The writing itself is solid. The audience understands what’s at stake and even when the writers take Sam into familiar horror film territory in its last 15 minutes, it’s not something that detracts from the overall experience.

The director has said one of his main goals here was to create a memorable horror film that touched on family and heritage, and Dutta succeeds on that front without having the film be too preachy. In an era where nine out of 10 horror films rely far too heavily on familiar horror film clichés, it’s understandable that It Lives Inside would hit some of those some notes, but the film is mostly a lively original. Despite some minor creative hiccups, it’s one of the more inventive horrors we’ll find this year. What spine-tingling frightful fun it is.

It Lives Inside opens in theaters September 22.

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