Bishal Dutta Wants to Surprise You: A Q&A with the Writer/Director of ‘It Lives Inside’
Horror films of the Western world differ significantly in pace from those in South Asia. Most Asian films take their time to unfold and according to filmmaker Bishal Dutta are…
Horror films of the Western world differ significantly in pace from those in South Asia. Most Asian films take their time to unfold and according to filmmaker Bishal Dutta are steeped in “the mythical and the spiritual.” Bishal’s film It Lives Inside will be released in theaters on September 22, and it stars Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, and Mohana Krishnan.
The Neon film marks Bishal Dutta’s feature directorial debut. He recently took the time to speak with us about the adventure of putting his first film together and the types of stories he wants to tell.
On His Familiarity with the Folklore Used in the Film
A lot of the film came from certain ghost stories that I used to hear growing up. My grandfather had stories. He told me one involving a mason jar with something maybe or maybe not inside of it. Part of where the mythological component of the story came from was I really started to think about those stories. I started to think what kind of thing could he have come up against? I had a sense of who the characters in the film were going to be. I had a sense of Samidha and her central conflict.
When I came across this creature the Pishacha, I remembered it was a story I heard growing up. When I read about the mythology, I knew it had to be it because it's such an uber-boogeyman and it's going to be scary to everyone.
The story about the mason jar is my favorite one from my grandfather. When he was a young man in India, he went to a family friend's house and his friend had a daughter who carried around a mason jar. She talked to it. One day my grandfather said to her, "You know there's nothing in that mason jar, right?" She got mad at him, opened the lid, and flung something at him. Nothing came out. My grandfather thought nothing of it.
He went home and crazy stuff started happening. The worst thing that happened was he left a pack of peanuts out, he heard chewing, and turned around. The peanuts were gone! This story directly translated into this movie.
On Merging Western Sensibilities with Eastern
This film felt like an opportunity to bridge the two because I really love American horror. I love the experience I had with The Conjuring. That came out when I was sixteen. I really love that visceral, pulse-pounding type of horror. I felt like there was a way to do both.
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With It Lives Inside, there is a lot of hinting at the presence of the creature. There's a lot of holding back on the physical manifestation of it. It felt that with increasing that slow build of tension and delivering a Third Act of pure visceral mayhem, I was combining the sensibilities of both worlds.
On the Journey to Make It Lives Inside
The first idea for me was very simple. It was essentially an Indian teen girl unleashes a demon. I worked with an incredible writer, Ashish Mehta, to figure out the story structure. We figured out the overarching flow of the story and the characters. Then I wrote it.
I’d made a short film that got a lot of people excited. One of the first meetings I had was with QC Entertainment and they'd done Get Out and BlacKkKlansman. They really understood this subset of horror that focuses on a social component. I had told them the idea and a few months later they followed up with me. That was about a week or so after I'd finished a readable draft of the script. It felt very serendipitous. They came on board, and we developed the script together. To their credit, it just got so much clearer with every pass that we took at it what the movie needed to be.
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At that point, Neon came on board and said they believed in the movie. We were really off to the races then. It was such a great process. We shot the film in Vancouver in October of 2021, during COVID. It was such an incredibly smooth production. Our partners up there, Brightlight Pictures, did a tremendous job of getting this movie made.
It was a massive jump in resources for me. Previously, I'd only done short films up until this point for practically nothing. Now suddenly, I had all the toys in the world to make my vision come true. We premiered the film at SXSW this year. We've had a chance to play at some of my favorite festivals – Overlook, Fright Fest, Fantasia.
On the Types of Stories That Excite Him
I enjoy telling stories about normal people in extraordinary situations. I love the idea of the most cosmic forces in the universe being pitted against the most normal people you can imagine.
On His Writing Process
It's structured around outlining. I think what's important for me, at the beginning, is understanding what the audience’s expectations will be. Then I try to think how I’ll subvert that or give them what they're there for.
As far as influences, Jaws is the cornerstone for me. No other film has tapped into primal fear like that one has. That's what I want to do, tap into something that's going to make everyone afraid and that's what I wanted to do with this film.
I have a couple of projects coming up that I'm very excited about. I want to continue to do original, high-concept thrillers.
I'm very agnostic about where the script comes from as long as it's great. Screenwriting is the foundation of our art form.
However, I feel like what excites me the most is directing and that translation of a script into a visual format and the translation of characters on the page...the actors inhabiting the roles. This is what I wake up for. It's so exciting to me.
It Lives Inside will be released in Theaters on September 22, 2023.
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Sonya Alexander started off her career training to be a talent agent. She eventually realized she was meant to be on the creative end and has been writing ever since. As a freelance writer she’s written screenplays, covered film, television, music and video games and done academic writing. She’s also been a script reader for over twenty years. She's a member of the African American Film Critics Association and currently resides in Los Angeles.
