If one starts to delve into Hindu mythology, in one or two weeks, one will be introduced to hundreds of demons, ghosts, or whatever you call them. Bishal Dutta, in his debut feature, It Lives Inside (2023), chooses to go with Pishacha, an expression of hostility in Hindu mythology. Dutta’s treatment of the horror genre pays homage to the timeless classics like Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Let’s delve into the plot of It Lives Inside, offering insights into its cultural relevance and its ability to deliver intense and visceral fright. Spoilers Ahead!
It Lives Inside (2023) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with a very tight angle where blood is everywhere, and a couple of family members lie dead. The camera zooms in on a door to the basement from where a boy’s growling and screaming are coming. As we enter the basement, we see a boy getting burnt while chanting a Hindu mantra. We see a jar fall from his hand and roll on the floor. The jar is partially black and has some Sanskrit texts outside. Evidently, this jar has something inside that should not remain within the human realm.
Why does Samidha downplay her own Heritage?
Later, we meet Samidha, who is not very fond of her own skin tone. She uses Instagram filters to ‘beautify’ herself. Samidha’s mother, Poorna, is very pious even though she lives abroad amidst different cultures. She makes ‘prasad’ for ‘puja’ and prays in front of Goddess Durga on a regular basis. However, she fails to make Samidha do the same. Samidha doesn’t help her in making prasad, even when she asks her to.
Inesh, Samidha’s father, comes back from a night shift at the office, and he always gives Samidha the space she deserves. Poorna shouts at Samidha for not getting her tiffin as Samidha runs off to school. There, she meets Russ, her crush at Wooderson Grove High School. In the class, when Samidha’s teacher, Joyce, indulges herself in a conversation, Tamira enters. She holds a black jar we have seen earlier, and an eerie atmosphere covers wherever she goes.
Samidha ignores her as she is vastly invested in finding herself in a new circle of friends. Since both Samidha and Tamira belong to the same roots and culture, Joyce asks Samidha to look after her as she looks very abnormal. Later, we see Samidha trying to ignore Tamira’s presence in the school wherever she goes. She tries so hard to fit in with the people around her that she forgets her roots. Tamira used to be her best friend when they were young. But now, Samidha doesn’t care what happens to her. Her urge for validation now lies among the people she hangs around with, not with her ‘used to be’ best friend.
What happens to Tamira?
Later that day, we see Tamira walking in the rain, trembling not because of the cold but because of the fear of being surrounded by some evil power. We see blood dripping from her bag as she enters a disused house. She places the jar, her hands trembling, while bringing a piece of meat from the bag. Subsequently, she opens the jar so that only the meat can be put inside and then closes it hurriedly. Tamira now rotates 180 degrees from the jar so that she doesn’t have to see it.
Later, when she holds the jar in her hand, the jar breaks a little, which makes Tamira more frightened than ever. She meets with Samidha the next day and tells her about the entity that lives inside the jar. Samidha doesn’t believe anything that Tamira says and taps on the head of the jar in a way that slips from Tamira’s grip and breaks into pieces. Tamira runs away from the spot when Samidha comes looking for her.
When Samidha tries to talk to her in a corridor, Tamira sees the door opening and closing on its own. Samidha sees that Tamira is looking at something that is not there. Samidha runs to Miss Joyce for help while Samidha screams at her, telling her not to leave her alone in the corridor. Someone invisible to the eyes walks past her, holds her by her hair, and suddenly pulls her away. Samidha comes to the corridor with Joyce, but there is no trace of Tamira.
The police filed a missing person report without knowing the exact reason behind Tamira’s disappearance. Amidst the chaos, Samidha finds a burnt diary that Tamira used to have. She tries to tell the others about what Tamira was saying earlier, right before she went missing, but she knows that no one will believe her, just like she didn’t believe Tamira. Later, we see Tamira kept inside a little bathtub under the observation of the evil entity, which now roams freely.
What does Samidha find out from the diary?
The diary had the initials ‘KC’ engraved on its cover. The following day after Tamira’s disappearance, Poorna organized Durga Puja in her house so that Tamira remained safe. Amidst the prayers, Samidha overhears a neighbor saying something about what had previously happened to the Choudhary family. Samidha talks to her father about the Choudharys and learns something interesting. Inesh tells her about something that happened at the house of the Choudharys one night. Their son Karan used to be a very smart guy, but his body was found under mysterious circumstances, completely burnt along with the dead bodies of his parents.
Samidha now understands that KC stands for Karan Choudhary. She leaves the house amidst the Puja and goes to the basketball gallery of the school. She starts going through what Karan has written inside the diary and finds out the mention of the evil entity. Karan even mentions keeping it inside a vessel and feeding it meat on a regular basis. There is also mention of the number ‘7’ in the diary, and Samidha googles its connection with Hindu mythology. Right at that time, she interacts with the entity itself. She runs away in fear to meet with Russ.
What happens to Russ?
Samidha tells Russ about what has happened so far, and Russ brings her in front of the house of the Choudharys. They go inside and find the room where Tamira used to feed the entity. There, they find these paintings on the wall, drawn by Karan, that show his pain. Since the house is under observation, they run away from there, hearing the police sirens outside.
Samidha drops the diary in the attic, so the following day, Russ goes inside and brings it back to her. They are hanging in the garden while Russ kisses Samidha. Samidha smokes a joint for the first time and coughs very hard. She stands up and hears someone calling her by her name from inside the house. Samidaha goes inside and suddenly hears Russ struggling outside. Then, she runs back and witnesses an invisible entity killing Russ brutally in front of her eyes.
It Lives Inside (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Samidha Get Rid of the Pishach?
As time goes by, the entity constantly haunts Samidha. She fails to sleep well because, in her nightmares, she either sees Tamira seeking her help or the evil itself. She fails to share her side of the story with Poorna or Inesh. Moreover, Samidha thinks that they will not understand. Of course, she is not wrong in a manner. Even she doesn’t believe a word Tamira said in the beginning until it happened to her.
She goes to Joyce and shows her the pictures of what Karan had drawn on the walls. Joyce calls her at night and tells her that the drawings are of the Pishach, a demonic entity mentioned in East Indian mythology. The Pishach feeds on the negative energy within oneself. In other words, as Joyce said, it’s a flesh-eater, a devourer of souls. One must trap it in a vessel. Swamis sometimes take on the responsibility of becoming a vessel themselves. Joyce offers her help to Samidha, and she agrees.
Later, Samidha tells everything to Poorna, and Poorna tells her that they must cook some food as an offering to the Pishach. She also tells her that the Pishach will not let anyone come close or help Samidha in this matter. Samidha brings the diary, where a Sanskrit mantra is written to trap the Pishach. Poorna helps Samidha understand the mantra and remember it well.
Meanwhile, the Pischach has already attacked Joyce, leaving her severely injured. It could have killed her, but since Samidha and Poorna are reading the mantra, the Pishach leaves her and pays a visit to them. It tries to kill Inesh at first and then rejects the foods Poorna had cooked as offerings. The Pishach only wants meat, and the offerings do not have that on the menu. It leaves the house, injuring Poorna as well.
Samidha now knows where Tamira is kept, and she goes with a jar to the house of the Choudharys. She finds Tamira in the basement, and the Pishach attacks her. Together, they start chanting the mantra, but since the Pishach has already broken the vessel, there is no way to trap it. The mantra, however, is making the Pishach weak, but it is ineffective unless they trap it.
At that moment, Samidha remembers Swamis becoming vessels themselves to trap the Pishach. To save Tamira from the situation, Samidha decides to sacrifice her body. As the Pishach feeds on the soul, whenever someone chants the mantra to trap it, their bodies get burnt in the process. That is the reason why Karan died. But since Samidha traps it inside her body, she and Tamira remain harmless.
One year passes, and we see Poorna, Inesh, Joyce, and Tamira looking at Samidha as she is offered a plate of uncooked meat. This is the offering to the Pishach that now lives inside her. They enjoy the meal together as Poorna removes the blood from Samidha’s lip. Later, when Tamira asks Samidha what happens if the Pishach comes out again, Samidha assures her that it will never happen. But we see a vast amount of discomfort in Samidha’s eyes. It is perhaps because she knows she can’t hold it any longer.
The more meat it gets, the higher the willingness to come out of a vessel. We saw that before when the jar broke a little right after Tamira fed it. There is no way the story ends here, but we have to see if Dutta makes a sequel, pointing toward a definite way to get rid of the Pishacha once and for all.
