Thursday 14 March 2024

VOD: It Lives Inside (dir: Bishal Dutta, 2023)

"Why are you whispering?"
"It's listening."

In an attempt to bring a slightly different spin on the very familiar ground that is the urban teen horror, Samidha - an Indian-American teenager - has to deal with clashing cultures and an evil spirit that feeds on negative energy passed on to her by a classmate.  With its mix of not-often-used-in-American-horror Indian cultural representation and very familiar genre tropes (right down to lots of rolling thunder and an abandoned house at night), the balance tends to lie with the expected - even her nice boyfriend does not survive a quick kiss and a puff of weed!  Simple and fairly effective in its execution overall, the film relies heavily on the commitment and reactions of its young performers and on atmosphere and suggestion rather than explicit gore, which it achieves quite well, notably the unsettling growling (largely) unseen spirit presence.  Note that the film does fall prey at times to the recent predilection for impenetrably murkily-shot sequences, especially the finale.

 

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