This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.When it comes to the best horror movies, specificity of vision is key. Getting right up in the guts of a distinctly terrifying force, be it grounded in history, identity, or trauma, is the way to give a familiar genre story something more. In writer-director Bishal Dutta’s feature debut It Lives Inside, this is something that feels like it is happening about halfway. The particular details of its characters and their lives are compelling while the rest of the story itself is quite lacking. In many ways, it is hard to even consider this a horror film when it often feels like more of a dramatic thriller. There are moments of terror near the beginning, but it gets far too tangled up in a generic narrative that drowns out any sense of vision. Even with some striking visual moments and excellent sound design, it is all in service of regrettably very little.

What Is ‘It Lives Inside’ About?
Image via NEON

The story places us in the life of the Indian-American teen Samidha AKA Sam (Megan Suri) who is just trying to live her life at her primarily white school. The question of assimilation and the toll it takes is a foundational one for the film as much as the sinister forces that are sprinkled throughout. This includes familial drama as Sam will often clash with her mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa) just as darker forces begin to loom large. Yes, this is another film from this year that feels quite a bit like The Babadook, but without nearly the same patience.

One scene at night merges the two of these together in appropriately unsettling fashion, but it is largely disconnected from the heart of the film itself. The driving force to it all is when Sam has a falling out with her friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan) who came to her seeking help in what is clearly a state of complete fear of something. This concludes with a jar being smashed that unleashes the full force of an invisible being on everything and everyone it comes into contact with. This also means that Tamira is taken, ripped away in the film’s most effectively scary moment that nothing else is able to match up to the longer it goes on, and Sam will have to find the truth in order to possibly track her down when nobody else will.

RELATED: New ‘It Lives Inside’ Trailer Unleashes a Terrifying Demonic Entity

The execution of all of this is quite clunky, with characters marking that they are about to look into a potential lead by saying lines like “something about that house just feels important, you know?” This is less the fault of the actors than it is of the writing that feels like it is almost riffing on the broad strokes of this type of horror film without adding anything to them. For every scene that takes place on a swing set that is a bit more gruesome, there are many more generic nightmares that just feel like it is all going through the motions. Having characters look into the monster to try to save themselves can be effective storytelling, but it requires a greater sense of care put into character. A generic plot can be salvaged by the people in it.

That just isn’t felt here as even those that do help Sam feel more like potential victims to up the kill count rather than fully developed characters. Making matters worse, the main characters will spell out what is all happening and what it means in a painfully blunt sense. There is an intriguing version of this story that reflects on the terror of assimilation via this demonic metaphor, but this one lacks the emotional depth to pull it off. Still, for quite a bit, you’re willing to go with it because of the more restrained approach where little is actually seen of the demon and Suri is quite good at capturing the fear taking hold. The trouble is that what we see at the end makes it yet another horror film that jettisons subtlety for empty spectacle. While the monster is a metaphor, the manifestation of it leaves much to be desired.

The Demon in ‘It Lives Within’ Is More Silly Than Sinister
Image via NEON

Without going too much into detail about the particulars of it, the film surprisingly reveals a lot of what the being haunting Sam looks like in a way that undercuts what little it had going for it up until that point. It isn’t without some creepiness, but there is just a fundamental lack of restraint that undercuts such elements. If you want to fully show your monster, that can be all well and good if it’s executed with an eye for well-constructed shots. Instead, the fight Sam undertakes feels a bit too hokey for its own good. It shouldn’t feel cartoonish, considering the more heavy themes and ideas it was lightly exploring throughout, though it very much does.

There is something almost poignant once it quiets down, but it is held back by the more misguided elements that it is never able to shake free of. The thing that lives inside the film itself is less terror and more tepidness as it takes a story that had promise lurking in every corner only to never care to look at them for long enough to discover what was there.

Rating: C-

The Big Picture

The characters and their personal stories in It Lives Inside are potentially compelling, but the overall horror film lacks a distinct vision. The film struggles to balance between being a horror film and a generically dramatic thriller, losing its focus and sense of terror. The visual moments and sound design can be striking, but they ultimately serve a story that lacks depth and fails to deliver on its initial promise.

It Lives Inside is in theaters starting September 22.