There’s a swirl of the old and the new in the hokey pre-Halloween horror It Lives Inside, a balance that could have benefited from a lot more of the latter – because when the first-time director Bishal Dutta does try to add freshness to the familiarity of formula, he manages to carve his film its own place within two overstuffed subgenres, flashes of intrigue as he veers between schlocky curse and even schlockier monster movie.
A wide-releasing horror film centered on an Indian American teenager already gives the film a certain distinction. Dutta, also acting as writer, tries to thread themes of assimilation and identity through a predictable procession of mostly ineffective jump scares and slightly more effective set pieces, the film working better when it’s trying to chill rather than shock. Never Have I Ever and Missing’s Megan Suri plays Samidha, or Sam as she prefers to be called, a girl trying to fit in at a predominantly white high school despite her mother keenly trying to keep traditions an integral part of her life. It’s led to a distance from her other Indian American friend, Tamira and, like Heathers and Fright Night before it, explores that interesting fracture of leaving one friend behind to climb higher socially.
Tamira’s increasingly strange behaviour both unsettles and annoys Sam, as she skulks around unkempt and insistent that something sinister is afoot. But when she goes missing, it’s clear that she was right about a curse that attaches itself to those with a certain heritage.
It’s a demonic spirit called a Pishach, one that appears in Hindu mythology, but one that’s ultimately a variation on something that’s appeared in a multitude of horror films before. It sticks to the dark, feeds on both flesh and fear and haunts the nightmares of those next in line. When the creature is kept to mostly sound design, as unoriginal as the noises may be, it’s a far more successful spectre. But as is frequently the case, the more we see, the less we want to and when we get the full picture, it most closely resembles the ill-advised human-alien hybrid from the end of Alien: Resurrection, snorts of derision cancelling out any screams.
Telling a story of a flesh-eating demon but working with a PG-13 rating, the film is neutered from the outset but Dutta’s sleek, menacing atmosphere and efficient use of darkness almost make up for it, his film nothing if not a convincing audition tape for bigger genre work. His script might falter at times (Sam’s poor mother’s middle name may well be exposition) but it’s in the more specific moments that some character emerges, difficult and unanswered questions surrounding immigrant guilt and cultural reinvention adding much-needed texture to the more rote horror plotting.
Some of Dutta’s of-the-moment metaphor horror might be blunt but it’s also, in some scenes, bluntly effective as well as effectively dour, his film climaxing with an unsurprising yet unnerving endnote. In the brief moments when It Lives Inside finds itself, there’s reason to believe Dutta will unearth more next time – he might just have to dig a little deeper.
It Lives Inside is out in US cinemas on 22 September and in the UK on 20 October
