It Lives Inside | 2023 | PG-13 | – 2.6.5

Why is “It Lives Inside” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “terror, violent content, bloody images, brief strong language and teen drug use.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a teen boy and a teen girl kissing tenderly, many scenes of an unseen threat terrorizing people, a few scenes of an evil entity attacking people and killing a few, a murder scene with bloody bodies, a few horrific dream sequences, many arguments, discussions of leaving family behind, and at least 1 F-word and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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When a teen girl (Mohana Krishnan) begins behaving oddly and then disappears, the stories that she and her best friend (Megan Suri) were told as children about an evil entity thriving on dark thoughts seem to be coming true. Also with Neeru Bajwa, Betty Gabriel, Vik Sahay, Gage Marsh and Saisha Muni. Directed by Bishal Dutta. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in Hindi with English subtitles. [Running Time: 1:39]

It Lives Inside SEX/NUDITY 2

 – A teen boy kisses a teen girl, asks if he can kiss her again and they kiss again.
► Teen boys and teen girls dance at a party.
► A teen girl wears a tank top and shorts that reveal cleavage and bare legs to the upper thighs. A teen girl wears a dress with an opening in the back that reveals her bare back to the waist.

It Lives Inside VIOLENCE/GORE 6

 – A teen boy sitting on a swing hears something growling above him, he looks up and is thrashed by something unseen; the swing chain is wrapped around his neck, he is tossed around like a rag doll, and thrown to the ground, dead with bloody bite marks on his throat.
► A teen girl goes inside a condemned house and finds a creature with glowing eyes in the dark; we see that the creature has shriveled, has decomposing flesh and what look like decayed faces on its torso, long pointed claw-like nails, and many long and sharp teeth; she repeats a prayer that causes the creature to thrash and her flesh sizzles, the creature hits her and grabs her by the feet, she screams, crawls away, hits and throws things at it, blocks a door, and the creature breaks through, grabs her by the arm biting her (we see blood), breaks down a brick wall and enters the room where it throws her against a beam (she falls unconscious). A teen girl is shown held in a bathtub with a cloth over it for an extended period; one sequence shows the cloth being removed, the teen screams and something unseen seems to be biting her arm (we see the flesh depressing and bloody tooth marks appear).
► A woman arms herself with a kitchen knife as a man opens a door, and the man is lifted off the floor by something unseen and slammed to the floor (we see bloody gashes on his back). A teen girl climbs out of a bathtub where she is being confined and collapses on the floor, she stumbles across the room and climbs a flight of stairs carrying a metal rod; she reaches for a door and is grabbed by the ankle by a decayed hand with long claws and dragged back down the stairs as she screams.
► A woman is struck by something unseen and falls to the floor. A door opens behind a teen girl and another teen girl looks terrified (we do not see anything); the second teen screams and pleads as the other leaves her, something touches the teen’s hair and yanks her off-screen as she screams wildly and disappears. A teen girl hears her mother crying and goes to find her seated in a room where the refrigerator is open and food in it is decomposing; the woman stands up from the table with cracking bone sounds and crawls after the teen girl as she tries to get away before waking up screaming.
► Two teen girls recite a prayer and cause an evil entity to turn to a mist and float into a vessel. An opening sequence shows bloody slash marks on a door in a dark house, two bloody and slashed bodies on the floor nearby and glowing red lights flashing behind a door where we hear a voice pleading with something unseen as we then see a body on the floor with its flesh glowing and turning to char as it gasps and dies.
► A teen girl hears deep rumbling voices calling her name from inside a condemned house; she goes inside and hears muffled screaming coming from behind a closed door. A teen girl sees a dark form with glowing eyes in a reflection in her phone screen and turns around to see nothing. A teen girl wakes with a start and when she hears noise coming from her closet, she sees a dark form with glowing eyes looking at her and the closet door slams open causing her to wake with a start again. A teen girl sees a shadow moving along a locker bay toward her and she becomes frightened, she sees something rise up behind a woman that she is talking to (she screams) and when the woman turns around, there is nothing there. A teen boy and a teen girl go inside a condemned house that is boarded up; they go to the attic and we see drawings of monsters and ghosts on the walls as police sirens blare outside and the teens run out. A woman looks in a mirror and sees a form with glowing eyes in the mirror when she turns off the lights; she turns the lights on and off several times to see if it will happen again, then runs out of the room, is struck hard and thrown on the floor by something unseen, she is slammed into a large glass window and it shatters (we see blood on the wall), she runs away and hides in a locker, something growling outside the locker pounds on the door as the woman screams, she crawls to a locker room bathroom where she sees something pulling down a shower curtain and she screams and we see her later soaked with blood lying on the floor.
► Blood drips from a teen girl’s backpack and she takes out something soaked with blood and puts it into a jar as we hear deep rumbling and whispering emanating from the jar. A teen girl is shown with her hair hanging in front of her face and slouching, seemingly in fear as she carries a mason jar filled with a charred mist in several scenes. A teen girl walks alone in the rain in the middle of a dark street repeating indecipherable phrases. A teen girl rides her bike on a dark road as lightning flashes and it starts to rain. We see a mason jar with an ashen mist inside it in several scenes. We see drawings of a monster and ghosts in a journal in a few scenes.
► A teen girl hears a phone message from a woman screaming and telling her to run away. A teen girl asks another teen for help and tells her about an evil entity that is held in a jar; the second girl smacks the jar out of the first girl’s hands and it shatters, spreading a charred mist on the floor. People talk about celebrating a day when an evil entity was overcome. A teen girl says that a man and a woman were found mutilated and that their teen son committed suicide. A woman confronts her teen daughter about not speaking Hindi and wanting to fit in with the white girls at school. A teen girl complains about having to prepare a meal with her mother instead of being with her friends. A teen girl talks about having failed her driver’s test for the third time. A teen girl says that her parents would, “slaughter me,” if she failed a class. A teen girl says that her mother is always afraid. People talk about a family that seemed to be “broken” and it was conjectured that they were running from something in India; we hear that their teen son changed and was talking to something that wasn’t there before he committed suicide. A woman reads a description of an evil entity and says that it is demonic and a flesh eater that devours souls. A woman says that an evil entity eats you slowly and then devours your soul. People describe people burning from within if they help someone against an evil entity.
► We hear that a teen girl eats her lunch under the bleachers in a gym in a school. A teen girl shaves her arms. A teen girl talks about feeding raw meat to an evil entity as an offering to keep it at bay.

It Lives Inside LANGUAGE 5

 – At least 1 F-word, 9 scatological terms, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (dude, menopausal, monster, psycho, crazy, housewife who cooks and cleans, gross), exclamations (cross my heart), 6 religious exclamations (e.g. oh my God, oh God, God, Jesus). | profanity glossary |

It Lives Inside SUBSTANCE USE

 – A teen boy lights a marijuana cigarette and smokes it before sharing it with a teen girl that also smokes and coughs. Teen boys and teen girls hold bottles that could contain alcohol at a party.

It Lives Inside DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Cultural identity, fitting in, friendship, scary stories, evil entities, loneliness, isolation, hallucinations, mental health, shame, fantasy, gods and demons, suicide.

It Lives Inside MESSAGE

 – Never go to sleep with dark thoughts in your mind.