Rent It Lives Inside (2023)

It Lives Inside review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

There’s a certain quaintness to how It Lives Inside weaves its horror centered around cultural identity, mythology, and anxiety. It attempts to tap into a particular perspective of a teenager finding herself dismayed and disassociated for being caught between two worlds: That of her Indian family and her American friends. Those pressures culminate when an ancient evil targets a teenage girl, still darting between the traditional name of Samidha and her conventional American name, Sam.

Sam has grown bitter about how hard her mom and dad stress their culture, urging her to speak more in their language and celebrate their heritage. At school, Sam also grows annoyed with her white classmates trying to use her culture as an accessory for their social media and status, asking her aggravating questions. So she’s in no mood when the quiet and weird Tamira starts carrying a jar of mysterious liquid around the school and becomes distraught. Tamira tries to make her case about some evil spirit in the jar requiring raw meat to be contained. Sam is having none of that and breaks the jar, only for Tamira to go mysteriously missing, and a dark, invisible force now follows Sam, making her life a living hell.

The monster terrorizing Sam is the demonic spirit Pishach. The spirit functions similarly to the rules and allegories of The Babadook, where it’s not so much a demon to send back to hell as much as it is one to quarantine. When Sam does nothing and lets her hatred of herself fester, the more the spirit starts hurting and killing all those around her. Her romance ends abruptly, and family gatherings become stages for her fears and outbursts. Slowly, Sam comes to understand the legend of Pishach and how best to quell the beast, using her heritage as the ultimate weapon.

The horror of this scenario is minimally used not to reveal much of the monster throughout the story, and for a good reason. In the classic sense of horror, the unseen creature is more terrifying than giving it a more visible form. That said, the film does bring the Pishach out of the shadows, and it’s…underwhelming. It’s not laughably bad, but for how much this demon is built up throughout the film, it’s less intimidating when better lit. Pishach is far more scary when he’s twisting teenagers to death amid swings, launching them through doors, or pursuing Sam’s teacher through the dark halls of school.

The script itself is fairly fine. Sam is relatable enough as a teenage Indian-American, given how much time we spend with her and get a vivid picture of her plight. Still, Sam’s mother feels mostly absent when heritage is not involved, making her more of a bookended character who feels more like a dispenser of Indian culture than a fully realized mother with fears and concerns about family protection and cultural preservation. Their ultimate resolve is heartwarming despite feeling more obligatory than organic.

It Lives Inside is a decent horror film for teenagers craving something more profound than silly, more cerebral than gory, and more poignant than mindless. I highlight this demographic because this allegorical horror is not as strong when stacked against horror movies like Ritual, His House, and The Babadook. But for being built as a horror story likely to be found amid the rows of Young Adult novels at the book, it might just be the perfect starter film for the tweens and teens just starting to get invested in the genre.