It Lives Inside

What Happened to the Alien from Asteroid City?

I had the opportunity to not only see and early access screening, but to work with Neon directly to bring an early access screening of It Lives Inside (2023) to my campus.

It Lives Inside brings a Hindu folklore tale of The Pishach, a flesh eating demon, to the big screen. While I have no preexisting knowledge on the tale, I do think this was a quite a creative and blatantly obvious one to turn into a horror film.

The writing was fairly solid. They managed their set ups and call backs very well. There were a few times it was unclear to see the character motivation for doing something or going somewhere, that didn’t really pay off in any way.

This movie was scarier than I had anticipated, I took the “PG-13” rating a little too literally. I had anticipated more psychological horror and suspense, but there was a lot more physical horror and gore than I had expected to see.

I was a little surprised by the quality of the cinematography and lighting, especially considering the genre of the film. I will say, the lighting changes fairly quickly and doesn’t allow your eyes to adjust properly, mainly when they cut from night to day.

The VFX were hit or miss. They did a great job at the gore effects and when the demon was invisible, when it came to the actual demon, it was a little spotty. It felt like they were trying to hide the quality of Pishach behind very little lighting. The Pishach looked like the alien from Asteroid City but more realistic.

Overall, it definitely hits the genre of horror and shows some different sides to culture that the mass doesn’t generally see. The suspense was done wonderfully and the writing paid off for the most part. I found the ending a little strange and am not sure what to make of it, but don’t we all love those types of films.