For the short comings that The Thing Inside Us possesses, the performances of the two leads aren’t one of them.  Both Shelly (Christine Tonry) and Daniel (Chad Graham) give earnest turns in their respective roles. Chad playing the husband becoming unhinged while Christine convinces as a wife who is trying to make sense of what’s happening to her. As strong as they are though, the same can’t be said for any of the supporting cast. Either they are given not enough to do or what they are given is just delivered without conviction.

With the world fighting a global pandemic for a virus called LV. During this, Daniel and Shelly are dealing with the fallout of the LV virus almost killing Daniel and leaving the couple financially, emotionally, and physically drained. Soon after Daniels recovery, Shelly begins to sleepwalk every night and ending up in the same spot until morning. After dealing with this for two years, it’s decided to start recording everything that’s happening, in hopes of getting answers. What they find will change how they see the world and each other.

If that sounds exciting and interesting, you’re not the only one. Unfortunately, this is a case of ideas outpacing execution. There are some interesting ideas at play, including interviews with the CDC and doctors about the on going pandemic and possible challenges that it presents. What we get is a decent enough beginning, an interesting middle and the less said about the final third, the better.

The Thing Inside Us is presented as a documentary in the beginning and maintains that throughout most of the movie. With most of the action being recorded on mounted cameras, we don’t suffer from shaky cam that can be an issue in these types of films. The lighting is also solid throughout, with most scenes being bright and easy to follow. While the audio is decent if slightly muddled in parts.

When a film draws parallels to today’s world, it lends itself an air of extra tension. But when handled poorly or ham-fisted, it just comes off as pretentious or even lazy. The Thing Inside Us had a chance to fall into the former but ended up in the latter. With our daily lives still coming to blows with the current pandemic, there was a chance to have this movie to say something important or meaningful. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.

This film finds itself in an odd position. On one hand, it possesses strong acting from its two leads, even if the rest of the cast isn’t up to snuff. It has an interesting foundation of a story, but it loses itself to weak writing and a garbled third act. This is a case of one step forward and two steps back. For every good or interesting thing that happened, two not-so-great things popped up. The Thing Inside Us aims for a modern take of a certain classic sci-fi film, but it doesn’t aim high enough or hit the landing so much as crash, burn, explode then put it out with bad CGI water.

4 out of 10