Movie Review ~ Inhabitants

Religious horror has long been a fertile ground for exploring fear—not just of the supernatural, but of guilt, faith, and the unseen forces that shape our beliefs.  From The Exorcist to The Conjuring series, the genre has often leaned into spectacle, but Inhabitants takes a quieter, more unsettling approach.  It doesn’t go for fire-and-brimstone terror; instead, it simmers with a creeping dread that settles into the bones.  While a tighter script and a more forceful climax would have strengthened it, the film’s strong performances and thoughtful approach to its themes make it a worthwhile entry in the genre.

The setup is familiar but effective: Olivia (Anna Jacoby-Heron) moves in with her boyfriend, Francis (Josh Andrés Rivera, West Side Story), a lapsed Catholic who insists he’s left his faith behind.  But something tethered to his past refuses to let go.  At first, the disturbances in their home are easy to dismiss—flickering lights, fleeting shadows, the things you can explain away.  But as the hauntings grow more visceral, Olivia and Francis must confront not just the ghost that lingers, but the deeper scars left by unresolved trauma and fractured faith.

One of the film’s biggest strengths is how it handles religion.  Too often, horror movies use Catholic imagery as little more than spooky window dressing—flipping crucifixes, chanting in Latin, and calling it a day.  Inhabitants resist that impulse.  It doesn’t demonize faith or treat it with easy cynicism.  Instead, it presents belief as something both comforting and suffocating, capable of offering salvation but also leaving wounds that never fully heal.  The real horror here isn’t possession—it’s the weight of childhood indoctrination, the way faith, once ingrained, continues to shape us in ways we don’t always recognize.

The film rests heavily on its lead actors, and they more than deliver.  Jacoby-Heron’s Olivia is a compelling guide through the film’s eerie unraveling, her transformation from skeptical observer to unnerved participant playing out in subtle shifts rather than heavy-handed exposition.  She doesn’t need dramatic monologues to sell her fear—it’s in how she tenses, and her gaze lingers too long in dark corners. 

Rivera, too, brings unexpected depth to Francis, whose struggle isn’t just against an external force but against the past he thought he had outrun.  Ana Auther stands out as Francis’s devout mother, balancing religious devotion and fanaticism without slipping into caricature.  And in one of the film’s more unexpected choices, Kevin Nealon (Blended) shows up as a New Age shop owner, his dry humor offering brief moments of levity without breaking the film’s somber tone.

On a technical level, Inhabitants gets a lot of mileage out of demonstrating restraint.  Director Matt McClung avoids flashy visuals, letting unease build slowly rather than relying on cheap jumpscares.  Pearce Healey’s cinematography is simple but effective, using dimly lit interiors and careful framing to suggest more than it outright shows.  Janhavi Naik’s production design impressively stretches the film’s budget, turning small spaces into claustrophobic nightmares where every shadow feels like it holds a creeping threat.  The film understands that what we don’t see is often scarier than what we do.

If Inhabitants has a major flaw, it’s pacing.  At nearly two hours, the film could easily lose fifteen minutes—especially in its third act, where tension plateaus instead of escalating.  The ending delivers an emotional gut punch, but getting there requires patience.  There’s a fine line between slow-burn horror and just plain slow, and Inhabitants occasionally leans too far into the latter.

Still, there’s something undeniably effective about this film.  It sticks around for a while after.  It unsettles.  It doesn’t rely on cheap tricks to get a reaction.  Instead, it burrows into deeper anxieties—the kind that can’t be exorcized with holy water alone.  It may not reinvent the genre, but it’s a thoughtful, well-crafted horror story that offers more than just ghostly apparitions and ominous whispers.  And for those who appreciate horror that digs a little deeper, that might be just enough.