It Lives Inside (USA, 2023)

When he was four years old writer/director Bishal Dutta’s family left India to seek a new life in North America. Getting an insight into his new country’s culture from watching late night horror movies on TV led to Dutta gestating the idea for It Lives Inside where the myths and legends from his own supernatural heritage play out against the background of an immigrant family seeking to integrate into their new society while simultaneously retaining their own cultural identity.

Megan Suri is Samida, a teenager desperate to fit in with her American classmates despite her mother Pooma’s (Neera Bajwa) best efforts to maintain Samida’s Indian Hindu heritage. Then Samida’s cousin Tamira (Mohan Krishnam) turns up looking wretched and clutching a jar. Tamira maintains that trapped in the jar is an entity known as a Pishach which was responsible for the death by suicide of another Indian family.

Samida thinks this is just daft superstition and causes Tamira to drop the jar. Well that’s the last we see of Tamira who is whisked away by the escaped demonic entity leaving only an old notebook full of Sanskrit jottings.

Now this is where things start to get weird for Samida starting with glimpsing weird things in dark corners and leading up to the butchering of her white boyfriend Russ (Gage Mason). Desperate for help Samida turns first to teacher Joyce (Betty Gabriel) and then to Mum to try and defeat and contain the monster.

I really enjoyed It Lives Inside. It was really fascinating to see a whole new mythology introduced into a genre film especially one that is so well made. It commences cautiously introducing Samida’s conflicting cultural identity before the introduction of the supernatural elements. It then ratchets up the action with some very effective SHX and a couple of well executed jump scares before hurtling towards its resolution like a rollercoaster of hackle raising and skin crawlingly icky intensity.

It Lives Inside is in UK cinemas from 22 October.

Offering a new dimension to the demonic possession and stalker genre we give It Lives Inside a 666/666. On our Daily Mail offense scale we have: swearing, violence and supernatural threat,