Dir - Bishal Dutta
Overall: WOOF
Though it comes in just shy of being insultingly terrible, Bishal Dutta's full-length debut It Lives Inside frustratingly blows a rare opportunity to represent Indian culture and some of the trials that come with Westernized immigration. Dutta's script has its heart in the right place, examining a teenage girl's struggles with complying to the costumes of her foreign parents and the relationship with her best friend of the same ethnicity, on top of the usual tribulations associated with assimilation into normal, high school life. It is nothing that has not been shown in films countless times, but the execution is especially lazy, particularly when the third act throws caution to the wind and bombards the audience with monotonous, laughable plot-holes and hackneyed sentimentality. As far as the horror aspects are concerned, Dutta seems allergic to anything that could be accused of being a refreshing deviation, with endless jump scares, creaky-to-blaring monster noises, a CGI demon that looks about as scary as a Spirit Halloween decoration, and pathetic excuses to get characters behaving illogically at all times. Not that the story properly establishes its supernatural details in the first place, taking a loose approach to its folklore that seems just as cut-and-pasted as all of the other genre films that it is constantly adhering to.
Dir - Joe Lynch
Overall: MEH
Overall: MEH
Barbara Crampton's production company Alliance Media Partners makes the inevitable shift to Lovecraftian horror with a loose adaptation of the author's "The Thing on the Doorstep", which doubles as a spiritual successor to the work of Crampton's frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon. Though nowhere near as gooey or laugh-out-loud ridiculous as the aforementioned filmmaker's Re-Animator or From Beyond, it still has some campy fun with the updated source material which hinges on a handful of actors sleazily portraying a body-jumping immortal. The tone gets mangled here or there as it balances some schlocky sentimentality with more horny and violent silliness, plus the dialog is hokey and the plotting becomes cumbersome after awhile since the story runs out of things to do besides having the evil entity switch flesh suites over and over again. Crampton, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, and Heather Graham seem to be having fun though, with the latter getting the most screen time, (and largely nudeless sex scenes), as the prerequisite, doomed Lovecfraft character that ends up with the short end of the stick as far as sanity is concerned. Mediocre maybe, but it has the right amount of throwback passion behind it.
Dir - Jacqueline Castel
Overall: GOOD
For her full-length debut My Animal, filmmaker Jacqueline Castel ventures into 80s throwback, lycanthropian lesbian terrain in a stylistically sincere manner that mitigates the would-be exploitative value of its premise. Underplaying its horror elements to the point of being inconsequential, it unfolds more like a ticking time bomb of repressed frustration than it does a conventional coming-of-age story, focusing on Bobbi Salvör Menuez' protagonist who is isolated in rural Canada, has a dysfunctional home life, is gay, either bullied or neglected by both her peers and elders, shunned by her friend/the young woman who took her virginity, and is a werewolf. With more on her plate than even the most dow n-trodden of teenagers venturing into adulthood can bare, it is no wonder that Menuez lets loose with an inevitable bout of fury at her hopelessly miserable situation. The performances are top-to-bottom wonderful, particularly Menuez and Amandla Stenberg as her also troubled love interest whose blossoming relationship propels the first two acts before things go tragically sour. Stephen McHattie is also memorable as the supportive yet somewhat aloof were-father, though Kids in the Hall fans will be disappointed by Scott Thompson's wasted three scenes, only two of which he delivers any dialog in.
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