It Lives Inside

Sam, embarrassed by her immigrant mother and desperate to fit in, pushes away her former best friend, who has been carrying a malevolent entity, a pishach, trapped in a jar. When the jar breaks, the demon is freed and begins feeding.

Bishal Dutta made a solid, sincere possession film whose real subject is second-generation assimilation: Sam's shame about her culture is inseparable from the thing now hunting her, and reclaiming the folklore is how she has to fight it.

It draws on the pishach of Hindu tradition and treats it seriously rather than as exotic decoration.

Megan Suri carries it, and the entity is kept mostly off screen, which is the right choice for the budget.

It is a familiar structure done with genuine cultural specificity, and it sits alongside It Follows and The Babadook in the recent wave of debut horror about a teenager and a metaphor.