They Live Inside Us Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A writer looks for inspiration while staying in a, supposedly, haunted house.

Review: A few things to know upfront: first, "They Live Inside Us" is an expanded version of a segment from a different movie called "The Witching Season." I honestly can't remember if I saw that, but it looks like shit. Second, this is yet another example of using Halloween for incidental, advertising purposes. Realistically, Halloween could have been swapped with National Pizza Day and little would have changed. Third, how the hell am I watching another movie starring the same guy from "10/31 Part III?" What are the odds?

So what is even happening here? It's strange, this isn't an outright bad film on the surface, however, it's boggled down by a sense of pointlessness, it looks and feels cheap, and, most egregious of all, it's too long and boring. Maybe this worked better as a short, but, in this state, things come off as bargain-bin "Sinister" minus the scares or production value. There is a twist that--sorta, kinda, maybe---redeems the film as whole, but even the delivery of this idea is confusing and left vague as to what is actually happening anyway.

I can see how this movie would have read better on paper, but the execution simply isn't there. Perhaps the scope was too large for the budget, but the ideas presented could have been simplified in a more meaningful way. For example, the notion that the writer's stories were becoming real, or that he was becoming one of his own stories, could have been shown with aspects bleeding over into reality after each scene. Assuming any of the shite we got was intended to be real in the first place. Overall, I think the user rating online is too low, but I can understand the source of the grievances. This is not a Halloween horror film nor is it even an average horror movie. In some ways a movie so bad that it's infuriating gets more emotion out of me, but this was merely a boring chore I only watched hoping it would be a decent Halloween movie. Alas, I was wrong, and you shouldn't waste your holiday with this level of mediocrity.

Notable Moment: When the random ghost in the sheet appeared toward the end. Maybe I zoned out when they explained it, but where did that come from? It was actually kind of cool.

Final Rating: 4/10