You’d have to think that wherever Wes Craven exists in the great beyond, he’s been looking over the last few years of horror cinema with a proud sense of ownership. After all, the trope of a suburban-set fright flick that focuses on teens encountering supernatural threats in an intelligent and non-patronising way found it’s greatest forebear in Craven’s crazily influential A Nightmare On Elm Street and as of late, a string of young filmmakers have been putting their own spin on things on order to explore new narrative ground.
This seems like a great time to put the spotlight on Bishal Dutta’s It Lives Inside, a movie that plays the teen vs. supernatural card to its fullest, but who keeps things fresh with the inclusion of a boatload of Hindu folklore and central themes of the second generation immigrant experience as the characters try to juggle living in western society while being torn by respecting their heritage and traditions. But what happens when the heritage and traditions tear you?
Samida is a teenage girl of East Indian decent, whose parents have very differing opinions about exactly how much she should be assimilating into the culture of suburban America. While her mother, Poorna, frets that she’s leaving the traditions and values of her homeland behind, Samida has shortened her name to “Sam”, wants to duck out of religious ceremonies and makes goo-goo eyes at class hunk, Russ. While Sam has made peace with dropping her heritage like a bad habit, it still comes at a cost with her group making race-based assumptions about her (good at math) and getting her to say phrases in her native tongue for the novelty factor. However, the greatest cost is that, in her concerted effort to fit in, Sam has ditched her childhood friend, Tamira in order to gain a better chance at popularity – but as of late, her former companion has been on something of an emotional turn.
Withdrawn, jittery and constantly seen obsessing about a sealed jar she mysteriously carries around with her everywhere, Tamira approaches Sam with the unsettling info that the glass vessel actually contains a Pishach, a malevolent creature from their childhood stories that is trapped within, but in a burst of frustrated embarrassment, Sam causes the container to break, unleashing a shitshow of nightmarish proportions.
Freed from its brittle prison, this invisible entity not only spirits Tamira away to consume her soul later, but starts stalking Sam, tenderising her very spirit by infesting her dreams and violently savaging anyone who attempts to help her. At her wit’s end, Sam not only has to find a way to combat a creature that no one believes exists, but try to locate where the Pishach has stashed her firmer friend before it gorges on her soul before turning its attention on scoffing hers.
If I’m being brutally honest, the central core of It Lives Inside is pretty much a standard example of Teen Monster Movie 101 that doesn’t really offer anything particularly original to the dozens of other, very similar movies that pop up every year. Megan Suri’s gutsy heroine and her subsequent journey positively screams Nancy Thompson as we watch her mature and strengthen as she is tested by her ordeal; Dutta allows the camera to linger on various shots when nothing else is visibly in the room in order to create an It Follows type atmosphere of dread to keep the presence of its toothy villain always at the back of your mind; the horror parallels to teenage life come at you like a never ending torrent.
Obviously, what differentiates It Lives Inside from the pack is Dutta’s use of Indian mythology to separate and refine the anxieties and fears of a teenage girl from something a little deeper than just wanting to fit in. While that urge is universal in most teenagers in these kinds of things, Sam’s desire to fit in also means she is actively embarrassed by her family’s traditions and the fact she’s turned her back on them creates the requisite parental tension vital to thus kind of film. It’s only a slight shift, but the latest offering of horror-flavored diversity makes It Lives Inside does just enough to freshen up a few, well worn tropes and partially flip the occasional script; but I weirdly got the impression that the less you intimately know the horror genre, the more you’re going to get out of the experience.
Megan Suri makes for an endearing final girl whose balances her character’s complicated desire to put some distance between herself and her heritage well enough that she doesn’t come across like an entitled brat and the rest of the cast play their roles well with Get Out’s Betty Gabriel also making a reassuring dent as a concerned teacher.
Elsewhere, the horror stuff goes fairly swimmingly too with sinister camerawork and a evocative score achieving that sense of creeping dread and while the movie strives to be more subtle in nature, the scenes where the Pishach attacks resemble particularly vicious animal attacks, if the animal was iened by the Invisible Man. However, while the cultural differences are an admittedly nice (and necessary) touch – no one ever thought to lure out Freddy Krueger by preparing a delicious looking Indian meal – if you were to strip Dutta’s influence away, you can’t help but notice you’re left with a pretty standard (if well made) horror potboiler that still follows the basic blueprint of the genre. On top of that once the Pishash is revealed, it shows a disappointing lack of personality and instead is portrayed as a spikey beast with a mouth that looks like a ripped out fireplace and looks more like a emaciated version of the creatures from Feast. Maybe if they’d made it slightly more humanoid or even verbal like the spectral bastards from films like Smile or Evil Dead Rise, it would have been more memorable than just a cool monster, but he feels like a missed opportunity to give us a solid horror icon that hails from another culture. Still, as ferocious monster go, it’s not on the screen too much, it’s nicely presented via mostly practical means and the set of legitimately evil choppers that nestle within its puss make the bashers on Rawhead Rex look like Walton bloody Goggins.
Strong performances, cultural differences and an ending that doesn’t quite go where you’d think combine to make the film a vibrant, healthy debut from Bishal Dutta; but it lacks the raw nature and unpredictability of that other, teen horror sensation, Talk To Me. Should Dutta continue to work in the genre on any future endeavors (and I really hope he does), I’d maybe suggest he works on making his basic framework way more original before he adds a new angle to an overused premise because It Lives Inside doesn’t quite do so rent free.
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