MIFF: Mid

My children have recently introduced me to a bit of slang they say to each other, sometimes about each other if they're being nasty: "mid."

According to Urban Dictionary, it's synonymous with the words/phrases "low quality," "trashy," "not so good" and "bad."

However, in my own understanding, it's more like "mediocre" in the most pejorative sense of that word. Something that's "mid" is somehow worse than something that's bad, in my way of thinking, because its very mediocrity makes it boring, whereas something bad at least holds your interest.

The word "mid" immediately occurred to me after my Sunday night viewing, my third viewing overall, at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival. Before I could even say it, though, my wife came out with another synonym, saying "That was very medium."

Indeed.

It Lives Inside interested us because it seemed like kind of a mix of something recognizable (a horror genre film) and something a bit unfamiliar (seen through the eyes of an Indian-American teenager and using some of her cultural heritage for its themes and imagery). As I started watching I realized that Megan Suri, recently of Never Have I Ever, was the lead, and Betty Gabriel, not so recently of Get Out, appeared in a supporting role, both positives in terms of the film's potential.

Potential it did not live up to.

It was a rare MIFF screening for my wife and me, who most often go to films separately. In fact, had we ever been to a MIFF screening together, outside of the premiere of the film she worked on back in 2019? Possibly not. 

We had a drink beforehand at bar in the midst of the Yarra River, which you get to by bridge. It's one of our favorite spots for a drink, but unfortunately, only I made a good choice. Considering how brisk it was, mulled wine felt like it would hit the spot, and did. However, she got something with mezcal, whose smoky flavor was entirely incongruous with its translucent appearance, and in all ways unappetizing. 

We also grabbed a slice of pizza before showing up at ACMI, which has some of the largest seating capacities of any venue at MIFF. Unfortunately, in this case that tended to emphasize how comparatively undersold the film was. Maybe that's not unexpected, especially if people had been MIFFing all weekend and felt that Sunday at 6:45 was time enough to be winding down.

And really this isn't the sort of movie you need to see at MIFF. It has such standard-issue horror components that anything potentially interesting about the heritage of its lead character was lost. In my mind I was likening it to the really good Iranian horror Under the Shadow, which does use aspects of Islam in its portrayal of the spirit haunting a Tehran apartment building. The creature here has multiple incarnations, as if the filmmakers were restlessly searching for a consistent visual scheme, and none of them really have anything to do with Hindu culture, as far as I could tell. 

Plus, the most interesting scenes always involved the character waking up in bed, revealing that it had just been a dream. And once they even do the "dream within a dream" bit, which is desperate at best.

I'll be desperate -- well, at least "mid" desperate -- to get back on track at MIFF when I resume with a double feature on Friday.