Streaming Availability: Rental
This is another new release, so SPOILERS! Not that I particularly think there is much to spoil this time. You know what this movie is already.
It Lives Inside is the most difficult kind of movie to review: the kind that is not very good, yet one that you do not want to be cruel towards. Its disappointments are offset by its admirable goals. I'm going to say some very unkind things towards It Lives Inside, but let it be known, my frustration is largely built on what a good idea this movie is, and how good it could have been. I hunger for diversity in my horror, and that includes ethnic diversity. The last week saw us go to South America, Japan, Thailand, I'm trying to not just talk about Satan everyday. So a movie about Indian demons should be great. And it is not.
Some of the best movies of the last couple of years have been about the struggle of identity in immigrant families: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Return to Seoul, Past Lives. That is an intense drama that works great in more "serious" films, but as Turning Red shows, it could work in fun genres too. Your mind and even body are torn between two languages, two cultures, two personas. That's upsetting, difficult, and indeed, terrifying. It Lives Inside was made clearly with the intention to tell that story from the perspective of a second-generation Indian young person. Bishal Dutta is Indian-Canadian who wrote and directed It Lives Inside. I love that his heritage was important to him and he got to tell that story.
And I get the feeling that culture was the only story he wanted to tell. Because the horror side of It Lives Inside... just isn't there. This is standard stuff. Stock. Garden-Variety.
It Lives Inside is a PG-13 horror movie about teenagers, so there's very little gore, few scares, very little sexual content or even horniness. Frankly, I'm surprised to see the Neon logo in front of this movie, because their projects are usually edgier or artier. It Lives Inside does not belong on the same slate as Infinity Pool or the Palme d'Or winner, Anatomy of a Fall. Today's movie has no successful jump scares, and I say that somebody who is not anti-jump scare. But there's no good laughs, no surprises in the script, it is template all the way through.
I cannot find much to say about the filmmaking at all. There's a brief Spike Lee double-dolly shot at one point. That is an idea, I guess.
The cast is fine, Megan Suri is good as Samida or "Sam", the lead role. I hope to see her in better projects. I'm happy Bollywood veteran, Neeru Bajwa is here as the mom and even the movie comments how great she looks for her age. They play off each other well, and the crisis of staying true to your culture or assimilating into the youth culture around you is a decent one.
The cruelest thing I can say about It Lives Inside is not that it is generic. Lots of horror movies are generic. There's a lot of product out there, most of it is not going to be remarkable to anybody. And that doesn't need to be a death sentence. There have been very good unambitious horror moves, notably Smile from last year. This year there was The Boogieman, a really basic yet fun movie that is practically beat for beat the same as It Lives Inside. (There's same-looking monster that's a shadow with two tiny lit eyes with the same gag of disappearing when you shine a light on it.)
No I will slaughter It Lives Inside with this: its culture disappears into genre tropes. I wanted to see how the folk monsters of India would change the basic spooky demon horror movie, instead, they're subsumed into it. They add nothing, except the same story but with Hindi prayers and anxieties about arm hair. It Lives Inside assimilates into nothing. You could tell the same story with any demon from any culture. The great American melting pot turns everything into Bagul from Sinister.
Well, we are here for demons, so let's talk about the title "It", the Pishacha. This is an ancient creature whose history goes all the way back to the Mahabharata so centuries Before Common Era. However, I'm sorry to report, I learned very little about the Pishacha from this film. It has to follow standard tropes, so the creature kinda doesn't like the light. It mostly tortures its victims and only rarely actually kills anybody. The rules are unclear and honestly don't need to be. You can capture them in spooky glass jars but doing so costs your life, so in the opening we see a boy burnt to death without visible flames, which is a solid image at least.
The Pishacha does look great once you finally see it in not shadow. Its body is made up of screaming faces. But as a silhouette you'd never know it was anything other than Standard Horror Demon #2. The monster barely even fits into the theme of It Lives Inside. It does not target Samidha because she's conflicted about her identity. It seems like it would eat anybody.
I like that the conclusion of It Lives Inside involves a reverse exorcism. Sam takes the demon into herself, swallows it literally. So maybe rituals around the world expel the demon, very few try to suck them in. From then on Samida has to eat raw meat to keep it satiated. That's a more interesting place to start than conclude, is the problem. Maybe It Lives Inside 2 will be the movie it should have been.
Next Time! Three movies in a row I did not enjoy, how about four?? And here is the worst one yet, The Exorcist: Believer.
No comments:
Post a Comment