A Movie Review on the 2023 Thriller It Lives Inside
BRADENTON, FL- Horror, one of the most popular genres present in cinema, is a polarized genre. It has the best of the best and, perhaps more noticeably, the worst of the worst. Unfortunately, the 2023 thriller, It Lives Inside is an example of the latter. This one hour and forty-minute movie is directed by first time director Bishal Dutta and has earned a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.7/10 on IMDb. Not good. But what is it that is not good about it?
For starters, it portrayed teenagers in an annoyingly typical way. From lashing out at parents, to being ashamed of culture, to sneaking out to a party, this movie encompasses everything stereotypically ‘teenage’. Everything negative, anyway. Not to say certain teens do not behave like this, but representing a teen hating her culture every five minutes and using other overused stereotypes leads to secondary conflicts which feel monotonous and stale.
Which leads us to the second issue, the likability of all characters present in the movie. Throughout all the characters you meet in the movie one stands out, not for being interesting, not for being cool, not even for being funny but for being extremely unlikable. This character, which is as one dimensional as the rest, seems to have a singular personality trait, apathy. Throughout the entire movie she is extremely apathetic, always irritated and extremely judgmental. What makes this worse? This is the mother of our protagonist.
The writers, intentionally or not, focused on making this character extremely unlikable. Directors making a character disliked by the audience is not new or incorrect but what they seemingly forgot to do is give a character for viewers to care about and even route for. The closest option to this is a teacher who, if in any other movie, would be seen as boring and dull but when put beside the other characters is remarkably kind and thoughtful.
Though this movie has several more issues, some things simply cannot be put into words. So what is the positive of this movie? It will definitely leave you thinking, positive or negative it will likely take a solid hour to process and understand this… interesting movie.
