Bishal Dutta’s Top 10 Horror Films:
Bishal Dutta is an up-and-coming director whose work has been celebrated at festivals across the globe. As a film student at UC Berkeley, his intimate drama Life in Color—currently available on Amazon Prime—was featured in the Emerging Filmmakers Showcase at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
A year later, he again turned heads for his gripping thriller short, Inferno. Dutta’s passion for filmmaking is apparent in his ever-growing body of work. Always ready to try new things, his filmography is a menagerie of genres: sci-fi, drama, film noir, and now horror.
It Lives Inside (2023), Dutta’s feature debut, centers around the Hindu myth of the Pisach, a malevolent flesh-eating demon that preys upon people’s negative emotions. Starring Megan Suri (Never Have I Ever), the film is a coming-of-age immigrant story set in the predominantly White suburbs.
Dutta describes the film as “a love letter to horror” that couches “the Indian-American identity conflict…within a familiar and fun genre framework.” Distributed by the independent powerhouse NEON (Parasite, Triangle of Sadness), the film arrived in theaters on September 22nd, just in time for Halloween season. Keep reading for Dutta’s top ten most influential horror films:
#1 - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Written and directed by Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street blurred the lines between real and imaginary with the terrifying Freddy Kreuger, the infamous blade-wielding serial killer who could kill you in your dreams.
It was a box office hit, launching a successful franchise that put New Line Cinema on the map. Dutta calls it his “the greatest idea that has been put into a commercial horror film.” He cites it as his favorite slasher film, praising its original yet familiar story.
#2 - A Nightmare on Elm Street Pt 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Horror franchises are often written off for their endless supply of uninspired sequels, but Freddy’s second reign of terror is more than meets the eye. Dutta describes its story as “incredibly layered and rich with meaning.”
The film, which many believe is an allegory for coming out, is rife with queer subtext that Dutta notes is present in “the performance choices, the location choices, and the horror set pieces.” Freddy’s Revenge inspired him to consider how one innovates within the constraints of genre conventions to make a film “unselfconsciously.”
#3 - Christine (1983)
As one of the most prolific and vastly referenced horror filmmakers out there, it’s no surprise that “John Carpenter is all over It Lives Inside.” Though Carpenter is most widely associated with the Halloween franchise, this lesser-known 1983 entry inspired Dutta to closely consider the source of a story’s horrific nature:
“I was certainly looking at Halloween in how it shoots the suburbs, but Christine resonates with me more because the horror comes from within. Halloween is more about the penetration of something horrific into the suburbs, whereas with Christine, the loneliness of the Keith Gordon character festers and wills the horror to life.”
#4 - Poltergeist (1982)
Directed by Tobe Hooper and written by Steven Spielberg, this iconic supernatural horror film subverts the stereotypically passive role of women in horror narratives. The story follows parents who aim to rescue their young daughter after she’s taken by malevolent spirits, yet the mother and paranormal investigator lead the charge.
Poltergeist influenced It Lives Inside through its “feminine connection to horror.” As Dutta puts it, the “shift from male power to female power” had a big thematic influence on him.
#5 - Ginger Snaps (2000)
This Canadian teen horror film directed by John Fawcett is a bit of a deep cut, but it’s no less worth your time. It’s a quirky story of two morbid sisters who are outcasts in the suburbs. Things go awry when one of the sisters becomes a werewolf on the night of her first period. Typical teenage girl things!
Dutta describes this fun werewolf flick as the “perfect blend of the coming-of-age experience with horror elements.” It partially inspired him to pursue the angle of It Lives Inside as a coming-of-age story.
#6 - Candyman (1992)
Urban legends are no rarity in horror, but this supernatural slasher certainly makes for a visual splash. Written and directed by Bernard Rose, this film is set in Chicago where a graduate student investigates the tale of “Candyman,” the ghost of an African-American painter who was lynched for his relationship with the daughter of a wealthy White man.
Dutta was highly interested in how culture and racial politics were woven into horror. Moreover, he cited the aesthetics of Candyman as a primary influence for many of It Lives Inside’s art set pieces. As he sees it, Candyman “foregrounds the importance of physical art to horror. I think horror can’t be spoken or written, but it can be drawn.”
#7 - Drag Me to Hell (2009) & The Ring (2002)
Narrowing this list to 10 is a difficult challenge for a cinephile like Dutta, so we’re counting two-for-one entries as fair game. Dutta points to Drag Me to Hell and The Ring as perfect illustrations of style and visual acuity. “I was really inspired by how these films modernized the curse movie structure,” Dutta commented.
The former centers on a loan officer who will be dragged down to Hell in three days, while the latter follows a woman who has seven days to live after watching a cursed videotape. Either way, they’re both damned!
#8 - The Conjuring (2013)
When it comes to the actual theatrical experience of watching horror, Dutta champions The Conjuring. He still remembers when it first released and the exhilarating consensus in the air: “The Conjuring is not rated R because of gore, language, or sex, but because it’s just so scary!”
Despite the rapid rise of streaming, horror films and theaters will always go hand-in-hand. Dutta says he absolutely loved the feeling of watching The Conjuring with an audience, an atmosphere he wanted to recreate in It Lives Inside.
#9 - Pumpkin Head (1988) & Hellraiser (1987)
Dutta bundles these two 80s horror cuts together, citing these films as the driving aesthetic comparisons for It Lives Inside. Dutta sought to implement the “dank, dingy texture” that Hellraiser established, particularly in scenes involving an eerie attic.
Dutta considers Pumpkinhead’s practical monster the greatest of all time, which played into his decision to utilize practical effects. This manifests itself with a tangible prop creature whose sliminess and filth consumes every frame.
#10 - Aliens (1986)
Adding to a long-standing debate around whether James Cameron’s Aliens is a horror film, Dutta declares Aliens to not only be a horror film, but a “perfectly told story.” He admittedly stole from this screenplay the most while imagining It Lives Inside and urges everyone to read Roger Ebert’s review.
Ebert wrote that despite having no technical faults, the film made him “sick” due to how painful it was to watch. Dutta considers that gut-wrenching feeling as the highest honor for a horror film and a physical testament to its effectiveness.