The film starts with the basic shot with a camera moving through a worn-down yet simple-looking house. Along the house’s corridors are crumpled and lifeless bodies. An unlatched door at the top of the staircase holds more mystery as screams echo from within. As we proceed down the squeaky stairs, we come across a corpse, burned to the point where steam still escapes from the charred skin. The glass jar filled with black smoke set beside the body hints at the immeasurable struggles faced by the Indian residents of this white suburb.
The feature directorial debut from Bishal Dutta titled “It Lives Inside” follows Samadhi, who is a student at the center of the tale. This role is played by the strikingly beautiful Megan Suri who brings equal parts beauty and talent to the screen. Sam, as she likes to be called, is used to the hero stereotype in teenage films with strict mothers and a crush on the popular boy (Gage Marsh) at school. Caste alongside Kalavathi Mohana who plays her former best friend, Tamira, who does not look the best. In fact, she appears to have trouble sleeping and even talks to herself while carrying the same glass jar we just saw.
This is enough to put her teacher, Joyce (portrayed by Betty Gabriel), at worry who approaches Sam and urges her to interact with Tamira.
Joyce begs Sam to stay together, however, she doesn’t want to be associated with the ‘crazy’ Brown person and refutes all of her claims. Sam fails to pay attention to Tamira’s tale of how a ghost is stalking her. Joyce’s friend’s stories of losing her jar were hard to believe, until she jar came her tumbler. Afterwards, the tiny toothed ghouls started terrorizing Sam’s dreams, causing the mysteriously missing Tamira to attack Sam’s friends. What comes after is an incoherent yet almost biopic account of a movie which wishes to be a teen blockbuster.
Many will argue the ‘Babadook’ comparison’ is more faint in the mechanics of the film’s monster. Both are helmsman ghouls that prey on the Scared. ‘Pishachis’, the name given for the Beast in Hindu and Buddhist Mythology, speaks volumes on how warping the brain can encompasses every being. The movie serves as a metaphor for the sense of otherness which forces people of color to assimilate into a white English speaking world. For example, So many things have been fueling Sam’s self loathing. First in the world to stop identifying with her Indian name, frustrating. Second, thinking of Tamira as a micro aggressive white girl with whom she can hang out. Third, not speaking Hindi and trying to enforce it over everyone: and not allowing anyone to step into her house.
Those choices put her in conflict with her mother who was a traditionalist which was the typical struggle to be expected of first-generation Americans and their parents.
One wishes Dutta pulled the weight of assimilation further, closer to how Remi Weekes handled ‘His House,’ another horror film too steeped in the immigrant experience. There are inklings that Dutta might be aiming to go there: We find out how the monster might originate in India and be passed along to other Indians who feel similarly alienated. But Dutta is much more interested in crafting a less than stellar Suburban teen story.
And when you add the fear of what being different might bring into the cultural scene, Sam like any other teenager just wants to blend in owing to the purely social advantages of it. However, when one of her adolescent friends is killed right in front of her, it seems that there are no after-effects on Sam at school. Everything in class remains as per routine. Despite being highly judgmental towards Brown folks, these overly cautious whites do not seem to be unearthing any explanations. There is no police, there is no outreach from the child’s parents, there’s no smashing of any expectation Sam may have set for this small town community. It all just happens to be absurd.
In order for the movie to qualify as a teen film, it must keep the audience distracted to a distant plane instead of drawing elements from more well made films.
The visual language limits the audience too: Dutta and Matthew Lynn, the cinematographer, adore macro shots and immersing the audience, but they also enjoy plagiarizing Spike Lee’s twin dolly shot. But instead of saving it for an important moment, they do it three times and only manage to shift Sam’s internal anxiety once. Those bad match cuts that are supposed to horrify are not effective and the simple sound design does not help either. The climax of the freak out where Sam fights the demon in the basement goes on for too long with no rhythm or speed as Dutta tries to find a way to end it, and set it up for a sequel.
When it comes to telling a horror story from the Indian-American perspective, especially with the setting of a suburb, the potential is immense. But due to many shortcomings like plot, themes and the movie’s tension, Dutta is unable to bring “It Lives Inside” to surface, making it only average on the surface.
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