It Lives Inside is an inventive horror film from writer/director Bishal Dutta, which explores the ordeal an Indian-American teenager is forced to suffer through, after inadvertently releasing a demon that feeds from her feelings of isolation following a fight with her estranged former best friend.

 

It Lives Inside explores very effectively the unfortunately familiar reality that children of migrants face when growing up in a different cultural setting. Megan Suri plays Samidha, a teenager who chooses to go by the name of Sam and purposefully ignores the school lunches her mother makes for her. Sam’s struggles with cultural identity have left her parents feeling disconnected from her and had ended the relationship with her childhood best friend Tamira. 

 

What the film does so well is how it turns this experience that is relatable to so many, into an extremely compelling basis for horror, with writer/director Bishal Dutta drawing from Hindu mythology to do so, to great effect. What makes It Lives Inside work as a horror film for a wider audience, is how it draws from American horror to present and structure this, though this can feel somewhat like allowing tropes of the genre to come to the surface. Fortunately, Megan Suri brings so much to Sam’s ordeal,  helping Dutta greatly in telling the story so convincingly.

 

It Lives Inside is an inventive and effective horror exploring from an Indian-American point of view the alienation children of migrants can feel in an unaccommodating cultural setting.