Yeah, yeah, yeah … another demon movie.

Anyway, this one’s a little different because nobody’s possessed; it’s more like a demon has been let out and is feeding on people.

It Lives Inside stars Megan Suri as Sam, an Indian-American high school student who has, over time, set aside or rejected a lot of her Indian culture/heritage in favor of looking more “American.” This has included drifting away from her best friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan). Lately, Tamira’s been acting very withdrawn, carrying a glass jar. Their teacher, Ms. Joyce (Betty Gabriel), thinks something is wrong with Tamira, but Sam blows it off and says she’s fine. After all, Sam has her new bff Kittie (Beatrice Kitsos) and doesn’t need that drama.

Tamira begins hovering around Sam and confronts her in a locker room. They have a fight and Sam knocks the jar out of her hand. What Sam doesn’t realize is that she has released a Pishach, which is a demonic entity from both Hinduism and Buddhism that feeds off the negative energy of its prey before devouring it. The Pishach attacks and takes Tamira. Strange and sinister things begin to happen around Sam and the film ultimately comes down to her embracing her Indian heritage and traditions as well as facing and fighting the demon.

I was interested in watching the movie because most of the demon flicks that I’ve seen have been centered around Christianity (especially Catholicism) or were “ghost stories that are actually demon stories.” I have a cursory knowledge of Hinduism, so the exploration of a common horror subgenre through that religion was intriguing.

The ratings on IMDb seemed to be middling, which disappointed me because I liked this movie a lot. Then again, I’m not a “horror afficionado” and wasn’t judging it on how scary it was.

It’s a PG-13 film that has definite teen movie elements, but the performances are all solid, especially those of Megan Suri, Mohana Krishnan, and Neeru Bajwa, who plays Sam’s mom Poona. In fact, Bajwa gives a great performance and the writer/director, Bishal Dutta, has her say a number of lines in Hindi without subtitles and then switch back to English at times. Having taught students who speak more than one language at home, this is very true to life (the linguistic term is code switching), and also true to life is the struggle for a teenager from an immigrant family to fit in to life in America while staying to the traditions of her culture, especially when that culture is non-white and non-Christian. I thought it was handled really well and while there weren’t genuine scares, the movie is tense in all the right places.

I found this on Kanopy. I think it can be found in a few other places. If you do watch it, put the captions/subtitles on so that you can get the Hindi dialogue from Sam’s mother translated.

Watch or Skip?

Watch.