Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You why. Hello everybody and welcome back. It's once again Me, your favorite deputy of Movie Deputy podcasts, bringing to you the intense interrogation of one of the new movies opening up this weekend. If you had a chance to catch yesterday's episode on the whole thing of upcoming movies, we talked about 26 movies that are opening up this weekend and I am here today to talk to you about one of them. It's not the one I was originally planning on bringing you today, but just because of scheduling and things like that, it was one of the only ones that I had a chance to actually get to and watch and of course review for you today. Now this one is going to play out a little bit differently than what I was anticipating it to do. So in the upcoming Movies podcast. This one is a movie that the whole idea of it is set in Hindi folklore that's going to narrow the audience significantly. This movie was rated PG 13 and I normally don't touch on that, but I think it's important to touch on it. Because of this particular story. I found myself wondering why this was even rated PG 13. Yes, the creature that is involved is okay, so maybe a little intense and okay, it might be a bit much for young viewers, but there was really I kept waiting for the horror in this one. And you may be wondering, okay, well, what movie is it? Well, the movie is called it Lives Inside. Now like I said, this one is about it's a Hindi family that lives now in suburban America. And one of the daughters, her name is Sam, she grows up with another Hindi girl in their neighborhood and they're literally best friends until high school. Well, Sam decides she wants to have more friends and she wants to basically be a suburbanite. She doesn't want to focus on all of the family stuff and all of the stuff relating around her culture. She just wants to live the life of a teenage girl in America, in suburban America to be more specific. And so she's trying to live her life without all of this stuff.
[00:02:18] Her mom's trying to get her involved and her dad's trying to get her involved and there's these things that they celebrate and her mom wants her to speak Hindi at the house and yes, okay, the movie is partially in English, partially subtitled, and even parts of the stuff that are in English are subtitled. But then one of the few areas where you want it to be subtitled, where they're talking about some of the things that are going on specifically with the monster, those are not subtitled. So it's leaving you wondering how accurate some of that is. I'm basically thinking most of it probably is, but since I don't speak Hindi or any of that, it's really hard to tell from my perspective. But in this one, the young girl that Sam had grown up with. Her name is Tamira. Tamira has just been acting really weird. She hasn't been getting any sleep. She's carrying around this really spooky jar and Sam's just like, oh, come on, get over. It knocks the jar out of her hand. It breaks. This supposed creature of this demon thing escapes.
[00:03:16] Like I said, there's so much more to it going on. There was a mysterious death of a young boy. No, not young, high school.
[00:03:25] So and then Tamira ends up getting kidnapped. Or she is.
[00:03:31] A little bit of that is left up in the air where you kind of have to jump to your own conclusions to figure out kind of what's happened up to that point. I don't know. It's just even Sam's mom is like sam, you can't whistle in the house because evil spirits will hear you. The whole premise of this movie is that if you go to bed with bad thoughts, with sadness, with fear, with anger, anything like that, this creature will feed on those thoughts and then feed on you. And so that's the whole premise of this movie. But it honestly gets lost a little bit along the way because there is so much more going on. Is the story true to Hindi culture? I honestly don't know. I don't know much that much about this. It seems like it was really trying to play up to the Hindi culture at the same time making light of it and almost poking fun at it in almost a disrespectful way. But at the same time, it was trying to wrap the whole thing around Sam's life, show her how important her culture is even in the midst of this suburbia.
[00:04:45] The story focuses more on that than it does on the monster, on the creature. Like I said, the creature itself is very intense looking. But I kept waiting for the scares. There's not even jump scares in this movie. Like the only scary god, I'm using air quotes here, which I know you can't see, but scary part of this whole movie is just the appearance of this thing and the attacks that happen that you don't really see it, but you're seeing kind of what's happening. But even that, it's just not scary. Now, there's only one thing in this entire story that actually makes this worth watching, and that is there isn't actually a twist at the end. Now, mind you, if you pay really close attention to this movie, you can actually figure out what the twist is about halfway through. Because I was even thinking it's like, okay, is that the direction that they're going with it? And then it got to the end and that's the direction that they went with it. So I was like, okay. It's like it kind of makes sense, kind of doesn't. But like I said, I like that.
[00:05:55] I won't say it ends. It concludes this piece of the story the way that it did. Sorry, that's just Maisie jumping down onto my desk. So forgive the sound of that. Like I said, the way this one wraps up, it leads that there could be more to these stories. This one just it doesn't fulfill on either the horror or scare factor. And this wasn't strictly my opinion as a PG 13 movie. There were quite a few teenagers in the same screening that I was in and a lot of them were laughing during the horror scenes. If that gives you any idea how scary or lack thereof it is.
[00:06:34] If you are wanting something that is just kind of an off the wall horror movie, that doesn't seem to go the direction that you might think it goes. But if you want like a movie that focuses maybe a little bit more on Hindi culture that kind of does that whole horror thing, or if you are familiar with this tale of this creature, the one that feeds on the bad energies and the bad thoughts, then you might actually get something out of this movie. If you're anything else, you're just going to kind of be left wondering what you just watched. It is only an hour and a half long, but that's honestly too long in my perspective of it. Personally, I wouldn't call this quite painful, but it was close. Definitely not horrible, unwatchable by any means. There was something to the story but you're probably wondering, okay, what I gave it. And of course I gave it a guilty rating. Like I said, the monster is a little bit intense and it would definitely be too much for younger viewers. But score wise, honestly, personally when I first left the theater, it's like I'm thinking, okay, maybe a two. But I'm like, okay, I can't go that low. Because it really did focus on some traditions in Hindi culture that there was that twist like I said, that you really had to be paying attention to catch on to it, but that it kind of explains itself at the end and leads that there maybe could be more. Now at that same time, I can't judge this based on where it could go. I have to judge this based on what it is. So I am giving it lives inside just a 3.25 out of ten on the movie deputy scale. So I hope that hasn't disappointed you too much. If you are of Hindi culture and you are familiar with this story, you might get something out of this if you're anybody else, it's nowhere near a comedy by any means. So the laughter was just, I think at the absurdity of them thinking that some of these scenes were actually scary. So will it go anywhere from here? That remains to be seen. At least it gives us a taste if it is going to try to go further. If they do carry the story, hopefully they will find some ways to maybe actually make it a little bit more intense and actually achieve something on the Fear factor. Part of that, we'll have to just wait and see. But make sure and come back tomorrow and Sunday as we're going to be talking about some other new movies coming out this weekend. And I can't wait to talk to you again soon. Bye.
