They Live Inside Us
They Live Inside Us is a short film which is a part of The Witching Season anthology. The story revolves around a writer who weaves a story around a haunted house that has already several stories related to it. He camps inside the house to find inspiration to write a story based on the past happenings of the people who occupied the house. Jacob and Cynthia Boothe, the past occupants of the haunted house are believed to walk the house even after their deaths as a punishment to relive the moments of their lives. A writer on a whim to take the inspiration of a tragic story and write a story sitting in the very place Jacob Boothe killed himself after killing his wife, sits at the desk and imagines various plots for his project until a tragedy befalls him.
The film opens with the lines of Stephen King, ‘Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.’ The title of the film is picked from the same quote. After watching the film, the appropriateness of the title will be understood. The detailed presentation of the movie is to be discussed as much as the beautiful production values. The setting of the scene for such an intricately woven story should be very mindful and in this film, we see such efficient work. The writer arrives at the desk of Jacob Boothe, the man who killed his wife and who killed himself later at his own desk and speaks into a recorder about the premise of the story and what he intends to do in the haunted house that is feared by all.
The movie has thought to add the necessary prelude to the tragic events that follow. As the writer tries different types of horror characters that chase his heroine, he arrives in one such a tragic circle where he writes his own harrowing death. The plot of the film is an intelligent one. The vision of the story is to narrate a character who is confined to a circle of horrendous punishment for his acts committed while he was alive. Jacob Boothe loves what he does, but his wife Cynthia complains about his obsession with work. The writer writes a scenario where the character from his story comes alive and he is petrified by what follows.
The cinematography is very much a make or break factor for a horror film, and here in They Live Inside Us we see an artful presentation of the story. The various scenarios imagined by the writer are shot with such diverse techniques to present the nature of horror in them and it was pivotal to the narration. The sound design elevated the movie watching experience as well. The performances were very good, and so was the direction. There wasn’t a real horror of unearthly nature, but the idea of a cyclic living of one’s own death is beyond any such ghostly horror.
