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"It Lives Inside"
Indian-American teenager Samidha (Megan Suri) is feeling torn between two environments where all isn’t entirely well: home, where she’s pressured by her traditionalist mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa), and school, where she doesn’t quite fit in and is subject to microaggressions even from her friends. Her heritage and her present collide when her childhood friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who has lately been acting strange and distant, confronts her bearing a mason jar. Something lives inside that jar something hungry that has Tamira terrified. She tells Sam that the stories of demons they heard as kids are true, and Sam discovers just how right Tamira is when the thing escapes its glass captivity, invades Sam’s life, and threatens everyone she loves. Sam is desperate to fit in at school, rejecting her Indian culture and family to be like everyone else. When a mythological demonic spirit latches onto her former best friend, she must come to terms with her heritage in order to defeat it. As the dark side of the folklore Sam begins creeping into her life, inescapable both at school and at home.
"It Lives Inside" initially emerged as an image, a kid on a bike, riding through Rockwellian suburbs. It’s right out of an early Amblin film. But what if this kid is escaping a puja, her school outfit wrapped in an ornate dupatta? For us, that image speaks to the duality we feel growing up as a first-generation immigrant in America. Where do I belong? Which country is my home? Which world is ultimately mine? When you move to North America from India at the age of four, a lot of your social education comes from watching American horror films. We always wondered, what are immigrant.families doing while Bruce the shark tore through Amity’s waters, while Freddy Krueger slashed teenagers in the dreamscape, and while Jack Torrance chased his son through the maze-like halls of the Overlook!
As it developes, the film forms its own dual identity. On one hand, it is a love letter to the community and culture that raised us while on the other, it is a visceral experience that is designed to instill the same raw terror in its viewers that our favorite horror films instilled in us. It's about the expertise in elevating socially-charged dramas to thoughtful, incisive mass entertainment in films like "Get Out" and Blackklansman". As the story developed, the ideas and emotions at its core only crystallized further and are never diluted or dulled down. We believe in horror cinema. It’s the greatest genre our art form has to offer, affording artists opportunities to tell challenging, emotionally rich stories within a harrowing, affective experience.
The film asserts its importance as an Indian-American ode to the outsiders stuck trying to live two separate lives and succeeds as a crossroads between international flavors and domestic horror mindsets. Thanks to the massive success of "Get Out," the last several years have seen an influx of Black horror films, bringing some much-needed racial diversity to a predominantly white genre. Latino horror has also been going strong as ever of late. Mostly centered on white characters. The film is influenced by 'It Follows" and "The Ring". The film asserts its importance as an Indian-American ode to the outsiders stuck trying to live two separate lives and succeeds as a crossroads between international flavors and domestic horror mindsets. A good, old-fashioned creature feature in a way that feels entertaining. In offering "It Lives Inside" to the cannon, the film wants to give you a window into the lives of people we care deeply about and to make you wonder if someone or something really is hiding in the dark, waiting to pop out of your dark, empty closet when the lights are out.
Written by Gregory Mann
