Director: Matt McClung
Writer: Matt McClung
Stars: Anna Jacoby-Heron, Josh Andrés Rivera, Kevin Nealon
Synopsis: A young woman moves in with her lapsed Catholic boyfriend, only to discover that they’re being haunted by the vengeful ghost of his childhood youth minister.
In order for religious horror to be successful you have to make the lapsed church-goer clutch their chest for a pendant that’s no longer there. You have to give them such a spectacle that for the run time of your film they question everything they have come to believe since falling away from the beliefs they held. The same is true for spiritual/new age horror. You have to make people suddenly wonder if their friend who burns sage and keeps an amethyst stone clutched in their hand at moments of stress isn’t totally out there.
Inhabitants attempts to have its way with both and it never quite finds its footing. That isn’t to say the conceit and the tension between Olivia (Anna Jacoby-Heron) and Francis’ (Josh Andrés Rivera) different worldviews isn’t an intriguing twist on the genre. It just muddies the waters of what we’re meant to be scared of. Should we worry that Olivia’s rituals are causing the disturbance? Or should we worry that because Francis is living in sin, vengeance is being wrought upon him? It’s not made clear for a long time, which is a problem with the pacing of the film.
The vibe of Inhabitants is definitely setting us up for what we assume is a poltergeist. Then it shifts to possible possession. Then it’s a sort of plain haunting. There is so much to the mystery that Inhabitants never really gets to the point. There is no jump scare or climax that makes you crawl out of your skin. Inhabitants never makes you want to hide behind your hands. It goes through the motions of the supernatural horror film, but never gives us the real thrill.
A lot of potential scares are left on the table. There’s a scene where Olivia calls home and her parents, whose objections to her lifestyle are never fully explained, are sitting still staring at the walls as the phone rings. What could they possibly be thinking or doing? Or is that just Olivia’s perception of them? We just don’t know because the tension fails to mount beyond the weirdness of the image.
In the tensest and potentially scariest scene, there are jump cuts that build to a climax. Olivia is putting the finishing touches on dinner and listening to music on headphones. Francis has gone to the bathroom to trim his pubic hair at Olivia’s request. The boiler is sabotaged by the spirit to make a frightening noise. The problem is that by the time the action gets to the point where Francis accidently jabs the scissors somewhere into his genitals, we never know where, which is so much the better, we’ve already anticipated the action for too long for it to be effective. It never scares us in the way it wants, but it is intentionally funny in ways you don’t expect.
The film needs to lean far more into its comedic elements. There are genuinely funny lines and sequences. The film is also funny without making fun. Denny (Kevin Nealon) the owner of the new age shop where Olivia works is a goof, but what he does doesn’t make him goofy. Lillian (Ana Arthur), Francis’ devout Christian mother, is a little too much, but is never shamed for her beliefs. If writer/director Matt McClung had leaned into the “Scooby-Doo” of the situation it could have made the film infinitely better than this attempt at something scary.
As it is, Inhabitants is a scary story without any scares. The film has the DNA, but none of the execution. Even its climax, at the apex of the haunting, after we know the whole truth, the resolution is tepid. The characters are too underdeveloped for us to really feel anything for them in spite of the actor’s proficient job with the script. If we can’t get behind them all the way or see the full picture of who they want to be, the whole thing falls apart. There isn’t a plot hole or a piece left unexplained, but it still feels very incomplete. The film is fine, but if you’re looking for scary religious horror, you may want to look elsewhere.
