TravelingbeebryantRN & Flicks_withNick

Released on September 22 from Neon is the movie It Lives Inside. The movie stars Megan Suri as Samidha, Mohana Krishnan as Tamira, Neeru Baiwa as Poorna, and Vik Sahay as Inesh. The movie is directed by Bishal Dutta, and this is his theatrical debut. As of this writing the movie currently has a Rotten Tomato score of 61%, with an Audience Score of 49%

The movie starts out in a bleak and freighting home. We hear screams in the background, as we see dead bodies throughout the house, and the camera pulls you down the basement, and we see a burned body. In the hand of the deceased is a Mason jar.

Daylight hits and we are in the home of Samidha, and her mother Poona. We see a rift between mother and daughter, as Samidha wants to fit into her American High School, while her mom wants her to keep her Hindi language and Indian traditions. Her dad walks in, and breaks the tension between Mom and daughter. 

In school Samidha goes by Sam, and tries to fit in with friends, and even a love interest. We see that she has a close relationship with one of her teachers; Joyce. Joyce is concerned about Sam’s friend Tamira, as she’s been having strange behavior. Sam stated she’s not friends with her. We then learn that everyone is talking about Tamira, and her weird behavior, including eating lunch under the bleachers. When we meet Tamira, she’s holding a mason jar, and we see it’s the same Mason jar we saw in the beginning of the film. Tamira eventually confronts Sam, and begs for help. Tamira claims something is alive inside, and is getting stronger every day. Sam blows her off, and tells Tamira she wants nothing to do with her. During this engagement, Sam tips over the jar, and the contents inside have been released.

For the remainder of the movie we see Sam believing more and more something is going wrong, and that something spiritual is haunting her. We get some stereotypical jumpscares, even including the dream within a dream scare tactic. We see Sam doing detective work figuring out what happened to the other Indian families that lived in the area. During this time, the riff between Sam and her mother is further apart, and now her dad can’t mend them together. Sam gets the help with her love interest, and her teacher during this time. She is drawn to the house where the previous Indian family members had passed away.

Sam desperately reaches out to her mom, and has her help Sam for the final showdown between Sam and the invisible spirit. I thought it was very formulaic, and predictable to have her mom help her at the end, where they were fighting for the entire movie. The big showdown happens in the basement, where the movie first started. I thought this was a strongpoint in the movie, where the monster kept getting bigger and bigger. We had to worry about Sam fending off the spirit, while at the same time remembering everything her mom had just previously taught her.

I thought this movie felt more of a relationship between a mother and daughter, than a horror movie.

The riff of being a teenager, while still embracing their culture. Even though I did feel the jump scars was formulaic, I thought it was nice to have an original story exploring an Indian family living in America. I did feel the PG-13 rating did hurt the movie. This movie felt more like an Indie film, and could have gone into more depth with the horror, with an R rating. We just had a movie earlier this year with Talk to Me that dealt with high school kids, and is still being rated. Even with all of these flaws, I still think this original movie is worth a watch. I give this movie a 2.5/5 stars.