‘It Lives Inside Review: A Horror Debut About FirstGeneration Immigrants Falls Short Of Its Potential

An encounter in a girl's dressing room sets off the nightmarish setting of Bishal Dutta's debut It Lives Inside, about a small town haunted by an ancient spirit.

Samidha (Meghan Suri) and Tamira (Mohana Krishnan) stand side by side in a dimly lit corridor, exchanging sad glances. Shared culture and history unite two teenagers of different reputations at an all-white suburban high school. It is now called Samidha Sam: an effort to bridge the gap between Indian and American culture, which her classmates imbibe. She would rather sit around a fire with her boyfriend (Gage March) than help her mother (Neru Bajwa) prepare the puja.

Tamira is a more mysterious character. Her personality seems to be the opposite of Sam's. A young woman came out wearing tight, ill-fitting clothes. It elicits stares, whispers and jokes. As he walked down the corridor, he seemed to be followed by an invisible force.

Dutta, who co-wrote It Lives Inside with Ashish Mehta, uses Sam, Tamera and demonic forces to explore immigrant isolation. The director is not the first to use horror terms to explain these issues: "No One Survive" focuses on an illegal Mexican immigrant in the United States, and " Nanny " chronicles the experiences of a Senegalese babysitter in New York. But Dutta and Mehta add personality to the thesis, building the story around the close friendship between Sam and Tamera.

Details, at least in the beginning, are very important. Sam and Tamira's relationship is full of clichés, but is ultimately saved by the idiosyncrasies of the first half of the film and the performances of Suri ( Missing, Never Me Never ) and Krishna ( I'm Frankie ). Tamera's voice sharpened and trailed off as she greeted Sam. There was a roughness in her posture, her eyes poked out from behind her messy hair and her lips parted. He tells Sam that he needs help and that the evil spirit that lives in the jar he's holding is ruining his life. Sam reacted to the fear in his former friend's eyes with concern, then anger. He said he wanted to help, but he had to tell Tami the truth. Monsters aren't real, ghosts don't exist, and ancient spirits are imaginary.

Anger crossed Sam's face. Suri frowned and pursed her lips in a desperate smile. "You're such a freak," she whispered to Tamira. And then, as if to further sever the bond between them, Sam broke the glass. The spirit escapes and Tamira disappears.

It Lives Inside depicts Sam's efforts to find his friend. He asked his mother mysterious questions and began to search for clues, delving into his incomplete memories. The film surprises us with jump scares and Wesley Hughes' mesmerizing score. The stake was high and we believed it at first.

Somewhere along Sam's journey, the spell was lost. Dutta's film takes an increasingly conventional path, abandoning the bold promises it made at the start. The movement of immigrants, the idea of ​​being caught between worlds, and the idea of ​​America as a land of opportunity are implicitly explored. Ambiguous dialogues, full of wide emotions, the characters seem more like symbols than people. More details about the friendship between Sam and Tamira or the scenes between Sam and her mother (which are depicted more clearly as the daughter gets closer to solving the mystery) would have given the important scenes more texture.

In fact, this particularity can also support the horror elements of the film. The aloofness of the characters means he lives inside, not always awe-inspiring. The scariest part of this movie happens in the first part, when we meet Sam and Tamira. Understanding their past together, feeling disconnected and admitting that the boys still feel estranged adds a chilling layer to the film. When Dutta stops focusing on friendship (for example, moving on to explore an underdeveloped romance) it distracts and weakens the story.

The potential of He Lives Inside - and why it's worth checking out, even if it's not entirely satisfying - lies in how it presents Sam and Tamera's relationship and links it to Hindu tradition. This association is quite bold and raises even more interesting questions about the exclusion of violent assimilation.